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THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

A PARABLE 

SUGGESTED BY A PASSAGE IN 

DANTE 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 



IN 1855 Browning published the poem which is 
the title of this paper — a poem undeniably 
powerful — which has been discussed and con- 
demned unsparingly in private as immoral, and of 
which critics have made curious explanations. No 
explanation which really brings it into accord with 
morality has ever been made so far as I know ; 
but having had occasion recently to examine it 
with care, the essayist believes he has fathomed 
Browning's purpose, and will submit his views to 
the Society. The poem is as follows : 

THE STATUE AND THE BUST. 

ROBERT BROWNING. 

There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well, 
And a statue watches it from the square, 
And this story of both do our townsmen tell. 

Ages ago, a lady there. 

At the farthest window facing the East 

Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?" 

The bridesmaids' prattle around her ceased ; 

She leaned forth, one on either hand; 

They saw how the blush of the bride increased — 

They felt by its beats her heart expand — 
As one at each ear and both in a breath 
Whispered, "The Great-Duke Ferdinand." 

I 



i " 



ROBERT BROWNING 

That selfsame instant, underneath, 
The Duke rode past in his idle way, 
Empty and fine like a swordless sheath. 

Gay he rode, with a friend as gay. 

Till he threw his head back — " Who is she 

— "A bride the Riccardi brings home today.'' 

Hair in heaps lay heavily 

Over a pale brow spirit-pure — 

Carved like the heart of a coal-black tree. 

Crisped like a war-steed's encolure — 
And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes 
Of the blackest black our eyes endure. 

And lo, a blade for a knight's emprise 
Filled the fine empty sheath of a man, — 
The Duke grew straightway brave and wise. 

He looked at her, as a lover can ; 

She looked at him, as one who awakes : 

The past was a sleep, and her life began. 

Now, love so ordered for both their sakes, 

A feast was held that selfsame night 

In the pile which the mighty shadow makes. 

(For Via Larga is three-parts light. 

But the palace overshadows one. 

Because of a crime which may God requite ! 

To Florence and God the wrong was done. 
Through the first republic's murder there 
By Cosimo and his cursed son.) 

The Duke (with the statue's face in the square) 

Turned in the midst of his multitude 

At the bright approach of the bridal pair. 

Face to face the lovers stood 
A single minute and no more. 
While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued— 
2 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor — 
For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred, 
As the courtly custom was of yore. 

In a minute can lovers exchange a word ? 
If a word did pass, which I do not think. 
Only one out of the thousand heard. 

That was the bridegroom. At day's brink 
He and his bride were alone at last 
In a bedchamber by a taper's blink. 

Calmly he said that her lot was cast, 

That the door she had passed was shut on her 

Till the final catafalk repassed. 

The world meanwhile, its noise and stir. 
Through a certain window facing the East 
She could watch like a convent's chronicler. 

Since passing the door might lead to a feast. 
And a feast might lead to so much beside. 
He, of many evils, chose the least. 

" Freely I choose too," said the bride — 
" Your window and its world suffice," 
Replied the tongue, while the heart replied — 

" If I spend the night with that devil twice, 
" May his window serve as my loop of hell 
"Whence a damned soul looks on paradise! 

" I fly to the Duke who loves me well, 
" Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow 
" Ere I count another ave-bell. 

" 'T is only the coat of a page to borrow, 
"And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim, 
"And I save my soul — but not tomorrow " — 

(She checked herself and her eye grew dim) 
" My father tarries to bless my state : 
" I must keep it one day more for him. 

3 



ROBERT BROWNING 

" Is one day more so long to wait ? 

" Moreover the Duke rides past, I know ; 

" We shall see each other, sure as fate." 

She turned on her side and slept. Just so I 
So we resolve on a thing and sleep : 
So did the lady, ages ago. 

That night the Duke said, " Dear or cheap 
*' As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove 
" To body or soul, I will drain it deep." 

And on the morrow, bold with love. 

He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call. 

As his duty bade, by the Duke's alcove) 

And smiled " 'T was a very funeral, 

" Your lady will think, this feast of ours, — 

" A shame to efface, whate'er befall ! 

" What if we break from the Arno bowers, 

" And try if Petraja, cool and green, 

" Cure last night's fault with this morning's flowers ? " 

The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen 
On his steady brow and quiet mouth. 
Said, " Too much favour for me so mean ! 

" But, alas ! my lady leaves the South ; 

" Each wind that comes from the Apennine 

" Is a menace to her tender youth : 

" Nor a way exists, the wise opine, 

" If she quits her palace twice this year, 

" To avert the flower of life's decline." 

Quoth the Duke, " A sage and kindly fear. 
" Moreover Petraja is cold this spring : 
" Be our feast tonight as usual here ! " 

And then to himself — "Which night shall bring 
" Thy bride to her lover's embraces, fool— 
*' Or I am the fool, and thou art the king ! 
4 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

" Vet my passion must wait a night, nor cool — 
" For to-night the Envoy arrives from France 
" Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool. 

" I need thee still and might miss perchance. 

'* Today is not wholly lost, beside, 

" With its hope of my lady's countenance : 

" For I ride — what should I do but ride ? 

" And passing her palace, if I list, 

" May glance at its window — well betide ! " 

So said, so done : nor the lady missed 
One ray that broke from the ardent brow. 
Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed. 

Ke sure that each renewed the vow, 
No morrow's sun should arise and set 
And leave them then as it left them now. 

But next day passed, and next day yet. 
With still fresh cause to wait one day more 
Ere each leaped over the parapet. 

And still, as love's brief morning wore. 
With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh. 
They found love not as it seemed before. 

They thought it would work infallibly. 

But not in despite of heaven and earth : 

The rose would blow when the storm passed l^y. 

Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth 
By store of fruits that supplant the rose : 
The world and its ways have a certain worth : 

And to press a point while these oppose 

Were simple policy; better wait: 

We lose no friends and we gain no foes. 

Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate. 
Who daily may ride and pass and look 
Where his lady watches behind the grate ! 

5 



ROBERT BROWNING 

And she— she watched the square like a book 
Holding one picture and only one. 
Which daily to find she undertook : 

When the picture was reached the book was done. 
And she turned from the picture at night to scheme 
Of tearing it out for herself next sun. 

So weeks grew months, years ; gleam by gleam 
The glory dropped from their youth and love. 
And both perceived they had dreamed a dream ; 

Which hovered as dreams do, still above: 
But who can take a dream for a truth ? 
Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove ! 

One day as the lady saw her youth 
Depart, and the silver thread that streaked 
Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth, 

The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked, — 
And wondered who the woman was, 
Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked, 

Fronting her silent in the glass — 
"Summon here," she suddenly said, 
"Before the rest of my old self pass, 

" Him, the Carver, a hand to aid, 

"Who fashions the clay no love will change, 

"And fixes a beauty never to fade. 

" Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange 
" Arrest the remains of young and fair, 
"And rivet them while the seasons range. 

" Make me a face on the window there, 
"Waiting as ever, mute the while, 
"My love to pass below in the square! 

" And let me think that it may beguile 
"Dreary days which the dead must spend 
"Down in their darkness under the aisle, 

6 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

"To say, 'What matters it at the end? 

" ' I did no more while my heart was warm 

" 'Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.' 

"Where is the use of the lip's red charm, 
"The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, 
"And the blood that blues the inside arm — 

"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, 
"The earthly gift to an end divine? 
" A lady of clay is as good, I trow." 

But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine, 

With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace, 

Was set where now is the empty shrine— 

(And, leaning out of a bright blue space, 
As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky, 
The passionate pale lady's face — 

Eyeing ever, with earnest eye 

And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch, 

Some one who ever is passing by- — ) 

The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch 

In Florence, " Vouth— my dream escajDes ! 

"Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch 

Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes — 
"Can the soul, the will, die out of a man 
"Ere his body find the grave that gapes? 

"John of Douay shall effect my plan, 
" Set me on horseback here aloft, 
" Alive, as the crafty sculptor can, 

"In the very square I have crossed so oft: 
"That men may admire, when future suns 
" Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft, 

" While the mouth and the brow stay brave in broiize- 
" Admire and say, 'When he was alive 
" ' How he would take his pleasure once ! ' 

7 



ROBERT BROWNING 

"And it shall go hard but I contrive 

"To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb 

" At idleness which aspires to strive." 

At this point Browning draws a line across the 
page, and sets forth his moral as follows ; 

So! While these wait the trump of doom, 
How do their spirits pass, I wonder, 
Nights and days in the narrow room ? 

Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder 
What a gift life was, ages ago, 
Six steps out of the chapel yonder. 

Only they see not God, I know, 

Nor all that chivalry of His, 

The soldier-saints who, row on row, 

Burn upward each to his point of bliss — 

Since, the end of life being manifest, 

He had burned his way thro' the world to this. 

I hear you reproach, " But delay was best, 

" For their end was a crime." — Oh, a crime will do 

As well, I reply, to serve for a test, 

As a virtue golden through and through, 

Sufficient to vindicate itself 

And prove its worth at a moment's view! 

Must a game be played for the sake of pelf .'' 
Where a button goes, 't were an epigram 
To offer the stamp of the very Guelph. 

The true has no value beyond the sham : 

As well the counter as coin, I submit, 

When your table 's a hat, and your prize a dram. 

Stake your counter as boldly every whit, 

Venture as warily, use the same skill. 

Do your best, whether winning or losing it, 

8 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

If you choose to play ! — is my principle. 

Let a man contend to the uttermost 

For his life's set prize, be it what it will ! 

The counter our lovers staked was lost 

As surely as if it were lawful coin : 

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 

Is — the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, 
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. 
You of the virtue (we issue join) 
How strive you ! De te, falmla ! 

It appears that Browning has materially modified 
the popular story ; and whether any substantial 
basis of fact underlies it, it is impossible to say. 
It must be remembered that the very word ''ro- 
mance" is evidence of the story-making capacity 
of the Italians ; and the mere juxtaposition of the 
equestrian statue of Ferdinand facing the house of 
Riccardi, may have suggested the whole story 
"which our townsmen tell." 

History informs us that Ferdinand became Grand 
Duke of Tuscany in 1587, and died twenty-one 
years later ; and as Browning's "lady" passed from 
girlhood to middle age during Ferdinand's life, it 
would follow that the events narrated began early 
in his reign. In fact it was at this very time that 
he married a French lady of the house of Lor- 
raine, his kinswoman, and by her he had eight 
children. He lacked the genius and resolution of 
some of his predecessors, but on the whole was a 
pretty good sovereign for a Medici. Much against 
his will, he was dependent on the throne of Spain, 

9 



ROBERT BROWNING 

then occupied by Philip II, and was a good deal 
of a trimmer, always intriguing with France for 
support ; and that he passed any considerable 
portion of his reign in riding to see a woman 
through a casement is altogether improbable. 

That a jealous husband should shut his wife up 
for life is not unknown in Italy. A Florentine 
statesman of this generation, a minister of state to 
Victor Emanuel, became jealous of one of the 
courtiers, apparently with cause. One night he and 
his wife were present at a company where the 
courtier was also present ; and on taking their 
carriage, instead of going home they were driven 
to the husband's castle among the xA.pennines. That 
he had planned this beforehand was shown by the 
fact that he had extra wraps in the carriage to 
protect his wife in her evening dress from the 
cold. This castle she never left, not even when 
the "final catafalk repassed," for her cofifin is still 
shown in the castle chapel ; and a striking portrait 
painted when she was near her end is also shown. 
Such an imprisonment would be impossible in 
English-speaking countries ; and would not be 
tolerated in Italy, even for the cause stated, 
if the husband could rid himself of such a 
wife by divorce. It is to be remembered that 
divorce is not allowed for any cause whatever 
either by the Roman Church, or by Italian law. 

Whatever the actual facts may have been. Brown- 
ing has given us a story, and is entitled to have 
10 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

it judged for what it is. This story is used, I 
think, to convey a single lesson, and is designedly 
simple and divested of all details and characters 
not required to accentuate that lesson. We have 
the Duke who is the "fine empty sheath of a 
man" — of commanding presence but nothing to 
him — who goes riding by the palace of Riccardi, 
his minister, on the latter's wedding-day. The bride 
sees him from a window, their eyes meet, and 
both fall desperately in love. P'rom Browning's 
description of her hair and eyes and his state- 
ment that she came from a southern clime, it is 
not impossible that he meant to account for the 
violence of her passions by implying that she had 
Moorish blood in her veins. There is much Moor- 
ish blood in Italy, and the Moors were prominent 
at the time named. The date of the Turkish 
assault on Cyprus, which is the time of Othello, 
according to Shakespeare, was 1570, or only seven- 
teen years before the accession of Ferdinand. Be 
this as it may, their mutual passion became the 
master motive of both lives. 

" For I ride — what should I do but ride ? 
says the Duke ; and the reader feels that he is 
indeed constrained to do that and nothing else. 
As to the lady — 

She watched the square like a book 
Holding one picture and only one 
Which daily to find she undertook : 

and 

When the picture was reached the book was done 



ROBERT BROWNING 

Without hunting for the wrong word, I will at once 
use the right word, and say that Browning with 
little circumlocution of phrase means to tell us that 
the one controlling purpose of both was adultery. 

The husband Browning was compelled to retain 
as ]jart of the original story on which he was 
building ; but purposely, as I expect to show, he 
is kept in the background and only appears during 
the first day. His imprisonment of the lady was 
merely nominal. She says that she can adopt an 
easy disguise and escape at any moment ; and the 
Duke says that he can and will sweep Riccardi 
from his path the moment his services are over 
in dealing with the French envoys ; and indeed, 
unless the pair could come together at will, they 
would not be open to the charge of irresolution 
of which Browning holds them guilty. Riccardi's 
act simply had this effect, that the couple could 
not drift together imperceptibly. Love might laugh 
at the locksmith ; but when Riccardi gave direc- 
tions to his wife to keep within doors and told 
the Duke it was done under the orders of her 
physicians, and the Duke commended his purpose 
as wise and kindly, then they could only come 
together by some unequivocal act that required 
resolution, or as Browning expresses it, by "a leap 
over the parapet." 

Now there is no doubt that Browning charges 
the pair with a sin in not carrying their purpose 
out, and means to be so understood ; and he is 

12 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

usually interpreted to mean that the converse of 
this proposition also would be true, and that had 
they carried that purpose out they would have 
been guilty of no sin, or at least of a less sin. 
The fallacy underlying such an assumption can be 
punctured in a few lines, and without diving very 
deeply into the laws of logic, either. 

The simple fact is this, that if the one control- 
ling purpose of a person's life be a wrong purpose, 
that person is in this dilemma; if he does not 
carry his purpose out his life is wasted necessarily, 
and he is guilty of the sin of doing nothing, which 
is the sin Browning cliarges upon the Duke and 
lady. If he does carry out his purpose he becomes 
a criminal, and his sin in this latter case may be 
much more heinous than the other. Browning, in 
effect, admits this in the poem itself, and how 
clearly he understands it is fully shown in his 
story of The Ring and the Book. Guido was an 
Italian nobleman, but poor. Under the social laws 
of his rank, he could only employ himself in the 
army or the church. He was precluded from the 
former because he was a constitutional coward, 
and he found himself at middle life with no pros- 
pects in the church. He therefore decides to better 
his condition by marrying. Being poor and per- 
sonally unattractive, he must marry a woman in 
rank far below him. This he does, and then schemes 
to get rid of his wife's relatives, and to induce 
his wife herself to elope under such circumstances 

13 



ROBERT BROWNING 

that he can keep the dowry. Then the supposed 
parents claim that the wife is not their child and 
therefore not entitled to the dowry settled on her. 
At this point a child is born to Guido and Pom- 
pilia and it occurs to him, that by murdering her 
and her supposed parents, he gets rid of all these low- 
born encumbrances, and all danger of being obliged 
to return the dower is avoided ; and in case the 
child should die he would be its heir. He therefore 
murders his wife and both her supposed parents. 

Now the real difficulty with Guido Browning sums 
up, speaking through the Pope, to whom the crim- 
inal case is appealed, in the passage beginning — 

For I find this black mark impinge the man 
That he believes in just the vile of life, 

wherein he shows that Guido's character and pur- 
pose in life are ignoble and wrong. That purpose, 
says the Pope, was to get money by fair means or 
foul : and when fair means failed him, to get it by 
foul means became his only purpose. Thus Guido's 
main purpose in life being wrong, if he omits to 
carry it out his life will be a monumental failure ; 
but because he did carry it out he became a 
monumental criminal. If with this supreme passion 
for money he had meditated all these crimes and 
performed none of them, the Pope might have 
condemned him as Browning condemns the Duke 
and the lady; but because he did perform them, 
the Pope hands him over, with justice, to the 
headsman's axe. It was Guido's duty in order to 
14 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

carry out his life purpose to murder Pompilia ; but 
for much weightier reasons it was his duty not to 
murder Pompilia. As the two duties conflicted, 
Guido's conduct ought to have been governed by 
the weightier duty. 

As this point is important, I will give another 
and closer illustration. Let us suppose that a young 
lady of Boston is a victim of kleptomania, and 
that the main purpose of her life is the stealing 
of finery. We will suppose further that substantially 
with her own consent her relatives shut her up in 
a room, but allow her once a day to look from a 
window into the shops where she sees the objects 
she could not help stealing if given the opportu- 
nity. We will suppose, further, that she lives and 
dies in that room, but has a bust of herself made 
and placed on the window-sill facing the window 
whence she had her daily glances. How much in- 
terest such a case would excite ! Strangers coming 
to the city would visit such a room and look at 
that bust more frequently than they would go to 
Bunker Hill. Now if this same young lady were 
allowed to go at large, and we read frequently in 
the newspapers of her arrest for shoplifting, and 
that she was fined in the police court or sent to 
the Island, all this interest would cease, and we 
very likely should say "Why do not her relatives 
shut her up?" We may feel sympathy with a 
criminal while in prison ; but we are afraid of him 
if he be at large, and all sympathy ceases because 

15 



ROBERT BROWNING 

the consequences of criminal conduct are then 
brought home to us. 

So with the Duke and the lady. History tells us 
that during the fifty-five years prior to Duke Fer- 
dinand's accession to the throne there were eleven 
undoubted murders in the Medici family and seven 
more deaths that the public belieVed were mur- 
ders ; and a large majority v/ere connected with 
sexual offences. Two of the Duke's sisters were 
murdered by their husbands for infidelity. The 
Duke's elder brother and predecessor on the throne 
saw one day on the streets of Florence a woman 
who had eloped from Venice — the notorious Bianca 
Capella. She became his mistress with her husband's 
acquiescence, but the husband was enough in the 
way so that he was assassinated ; and the Duchess 
died and the Duke thereupon m.ade Bianca his 
wife. It may be worth noting that she immediately 
began to scheme to deprive Duke Ferdinand of 
the succession by palming off another's child as 
her own; and when her husband died suddenly, 
and she a fev/ hours later, it was popularly supposed 
that Duke Ferdinand had poisoned them. Later 
historians are inclined to acquit him of this crime ; 
but the dangerous position of Riccardi is well 
illustrated by this story. If he had been willing to 
take the ignominious position of consenting to his 
wife's shame, and to have had heirs of his ancient 
line of which he was not the father, not even that 
would have made his life safe. In short, he was 
i6 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

amply justified in the course he took, which as 
the story tells us, he explained to his wife was a 
choice of evils. If the Duke and the lady had 
broken the seventh commandment only, we should 
have had little sympathy with them. It would have 
been the old, old story ; and the tale would have 
excited at most a languid interest. If in addition 
they had broken all the other commandments 
usual with the Medici family in such cases, they 
would have been objects of abhorrence. We only 
tolerate them because of the sin of infirmity of 
purpose which Browning lays to their charge, and 
that because the sin of omission was less serious 
in its consequences than the sin of commission ; 
and, since their life purpose was wrong, they must 
be guilty of one or the other. 

People who believe Browning was oblivious of 
all this, advance two theories ; 

One theory is that he looked upon love as a 
spiritual claim — that is as an inspiration or higher 
law — and duty as a worldly claim and inferior ; 
and several of his poems, considered superficially, 
might be held to support this view. But only people 
of crooked minds could seriously hold such an 
opinion in any universal sense. There are loves 
and duties of all degrees and kinds, and love must 
necessarily carry with it some duties, and some 
love with its accompanying duties may be superior 
to some other and conflicting duty ; and Browning 
had too sane a mind to have believed more than 

^7 



ROBERT BROWNING 

this. Certainly the love that would be a pre- 
eminent spiritual claim must have in itself marked 
elements of spirituality ; and Browning makes it 
quite clear that the love of the Duke and the lady 
had little of this element. In this connection it i.- 
perhaps worth noticing that under Darwin's law, 
love between the sexes is at once accounted for 
scientifically since neither the fit nor the unfit 
could survive without it, while the sentiment of 
duty is a later development; and Huxley contends 
that the sense of duty and all altruistic sentiments 
cannot be accounted for by Darwin's law at all. 
Therefore, if either be deemed inspirational and 
supernatural as distinguished from the other, it 
would be duty. 

Fortunately Browning need not be convicted of 
the belief charged in order to explain this par- 
ticular poem. He says in the poem itself ; 

Let a man contend to the uttermost 
For his life's set prize be it Tuhat it ivill. 

He does not stipulate that the set prize be love; 
it may be anything. 

The second attempted explanation, which is given 
in the Browning Cyclopedia, is that Browning be- 
lieved our duty to ourselves was superior to our 
duty to others \ and there is no doubt that he 
insists strongly in many places on the duty of 
personality and self-development. The people who 
make the most of themselves are usually those who 
do the most for the world. In a certain sense our 
i8 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

first duty is to ourselves, and our life's set prize 
has a value to us whatever other people may think 
of it ; but whether we should insist upon securing 
that prize to the injury of others depends upon 
how important the prize is to us on the one hand, 
and the amount of injury done on the other ; and 
the claim that we should get what we want 
regardless of consequences outside, is altogether 
untenable. Henry Jones proposes a modification 
of this theory, that Browning believed it "better 
to seek evil with one's whole mind than be luke- 
warm in goodness," and Mrs. Orr and several 
others concur in this explanation ; but while the 
sentiment that it is better to be an energetic sinner 
than a Laodicean saint would excite a momentary 
applause it is not the truth, and no sane man ever 
really believed it. The more active a mosquito is 
the less we like him, however much he may be 
commended from the mere mosquito standpoint. 

The ambiguousness of Browning's style, and his 
dramatic tendency to look at things from one 
special point of view, have laid him open beyond 
the ordinary to misconceptions. Many times he 
expressed himself with great bitterness at being 
charged with holding personal opinions spoken by 
some of his dramatis personcc in character. The 
absurdity of charging him with theological notions 
similar to Caliban's is manifest; and it is equally 
unjust to assume that words spoken in a certain 
connection to produce a certain artistic effect were 

19 



ROBERT BROWNING 

meant to embody general truths. I have heard 
people infer from Turner's Slave Ship that the 
painter thought chains and fetters would float on 
water. It is too much to call such criticisms unjust \ 
they are simply stupid. So the poem in question 
is a work of art ; and it behooves us to see if it 
does not admit of an explanation consistent with 
belief in Browning's sanity. It has been one great 
aim of this generation to show scientificEdly that 
the home and the family have been the basis of 
civilization itself ; and to suppose that Browning 
believed the domestic bond should be sundered 
merely as a display of energy, or in order to de- 
velop character, is not to be entertained on any- 
thing short of the plainest evidence. The following 
humorous item in a recent Sunday Herald can 
teach us a better lesson in criticism : 

"A little boy in New York is credited with $765 deposited 
by him in one of the savings banks here, all which he has won 
playing craps. The moral of this discovery is that little boys 
should save their pennies, but that they should n't play craps." 

So while we are certain Browning appreciated 
that society has claims upon us that are paramount, 
it is evident that in this poem he deliberately ig- 
nores them ; that is he took a point of view, so to 
speak, from which duty to society was not visible. 
Was this a legitimate thing to do ? For certain 
purposes, "Yes," and much of the work most im- 
portant to the world has been done on the same 
principle. In Buckle's gigantic fragment this fact 
20 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

is dealt with very instructively when he treats of 
the writings of Adam Smith. Smith, he says, made 
a great attempt to study the actions of men sci- 
entifically and without the intervention of super- 
natural ideas; and in 1759 published his Theory 
of Moral Sentiments in which he attempted to show 
that the genesis of our moral ideas was sympathy, 
stating that if there were only one being in the 
universe there would be no such thing as morality ; 
and in this book he assumed in effect that man 
was a purely altruistic being. In 1776 he published 
his Wealth of Nations wherein he assumed that 
man was a purely selfish being. Thus in each case 
he suppressed one whole side of human nature ; 
but, says Buckle, with our limited faculties it was 
necessary for him to simplify so complicated a 
problem as human conduct in order to reason at 
all. In discussing the laws of trade, by assuming 
that every man will be governed by self-interest. 
Smith is able to arrive at definite results of great 
value ; whereas if he had said on a given question 
that man being both selfish and altruistic would 
sometimes do one thing and sometimes the oppo- 
site, and it was impossible to tell which, he would 
have arrived at no result at all. But, Buckle goes 
on to say, while Adam Smith's results are not false 
since his premises are not false, yet his premises 
being imperfect his results are imperfect. What 
would be sound doctrine considered as a question 
of political economy might be unsound in morals ; 

21 



ROBERT BROWNING 

and a statesman who must deal with the whole 
man, and not man with half of his nature 
suppressed, might find Adam Smith's well-reasoned 
propositions in both works unsound and altogether 
unsuited to statecraft. 

Now as Adam Smith constructed his IVealth of 
Nations by knowingly suppressing an important 
truth, and even consented that his lesson should 
be imperfect in order that he might teach any 
lesson at all, so Browning has in this poem know- 
ingly suppressed the importance of a right purpose 
in life in order to teach with great force the duty 
of carrying one's life-purpose out; and in consid- 
ering the ethics of conduct as a whole, his lesson 
is knowingly imperfect. In fact, our glimpses of 
truth are all imperfect ; and when Pilate asked 
Christ "What is truth?" no answer is reported. 
Only the universe is the whole truth, and we sim- 
ply quarry out a fragment here and there ; and 
Browning, no more than w^e, could have supposed 
that our conduct should be governed by any one 
such fragment. The passage of Scripture, ''Whatso- 
ever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might," teaches the same lesson as The Statue 
AND THE Bust, and is in the same way imperfect. 
Likewise, the saying sometimes made from the 
pulpit that Satan in energy and persistence sets 
Christians a commendable example, teaches the same 
lesson, and is in the same way imperfect. The con- 

22 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

trary duty of morality — that is of having a right pur- 
pose in life with due regard to other people — Smith 
teaches in his Theory of Mo7-al Sentimenfs^ Brown- 
ing in his story of Guido, and the Bible everywhere. 
Browning does not suggest that Guido was to be 
commended for his energy and persistence in 
murdering Pompilia even to carry out his life- 
purpose of money-getting. That consideration 
belongs to another story. 

Hovv then, should this poem be classified? Cer- 
tainly as belonging to some species of composition 
wherein the suppression far exceeds that made by 
Adam Smith, where it is so great that the imper- 
fection in the result may amount to a paradox. In 
short, it must be classed as some form of riddle, 
the most extreme type of which is perhaps the 
conundrum or pun wherein all common sense is 
suppressed, and it is assumed that two things are 
the same if they sound the same. If we are told 
that a door is not a door when it is ajar (ajar), 
we have a statement that is true in the conundrum- 
world but is very imperfect in the real world. As 
we go higher in the grade of riddles, the suppres- 
sion becomes less extreme, and we finally come to 
the parable. Here I think we may pause. Thk 
Statue and the Bust is a parable. A parable is a 
story real or fictitious whereby the narrator seeks 
to make a single point impressive by a forcible 
illustration, but in which the analogy may be so 

23 



ROBERT BROWNING 

narrow that if carried beyond the point intended, 
it may lead to a paradox. I refer to such a para- 
dox as the averment that Guido ought and ought 
not to murder PompiUa, each of which is true 
and each untrue from different points of view. Let 
me add to make clear what above I call "suppres- 
sion" that what is true only from a certain point 
of view, or on a certain assumption, involves a 
tacit suppression of all other points of view and 
all other assumptions. Thus the parable is in its 
nature a puzzle, and the Scriptures tell us is often 
so intended. It is also meant to teach a lesson ; 
and I think there is significance in the fact that 
Browning at the conclusion of his story draws a 
line across the page and sets forth his lesson. His 
explanation carefully examined, shows quite clearly 
for Browning that the tale he has told is a para- 
ble. The lines 

I hear you reproach, " But delay was best, 

** For their end was a crime." — Oh, a crime will do 

As well, I reply, to serve for a test. 

As a virtue golden through and through, 

concede, you will observe, that the carrying out 
of their purpose by the lovers would have been a 
crime, and tells us that he is using the story as 
an illustration simply. But it is in the last two 
lines where he quite clearly states that the story 
is to be understood as a parable. Those lines 
read with proper em.phasis are as follows ; 
24 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

You of the virtue (we issue join) 
How strive you ! De ie, fabitla I * 

These lines may be paraphrased as follows ; "You 
of virtuous purpose but I fear feeble in execution, 
you who are shocked at this tale, talking right 
motive but I suspect taking it out in talk, — I now 
lock horns with you as to your conduct. How do 
you strive? It is not these two sinners of former 
days, but you who are the real subject of this 
tale." The Latin words "De te" mean "concerning 
you" or "about you" ; and their position before 
"fabula" gives precisely this emphasis to the word 
"you". It is another case of Nathan saying to 
David (after telling his parable of the pet lamb) 
''TJiou art the man !" 

Having settled the point that the poem is a 
para^ble, all ethical difficulties are at an end. The 
Scriptural parable of the unjust steward involves a 
similar paradox. Christ reminds his hearers that 
they will soon lose this world as a habitation, and 
as a mere matter of prudence might well strive 
to conciliate Him who dwelleth in eternal habita- 



* These Latin words are quoted from Horace, Satire I. 
Book I. lines 68 — 70. 

Tantalus a labris sitiens fugientia captat 
Flumina. . . Quid rides ? mutato nomine de te 
Fabula narratur. 
"Why do you laugh? Only change the nam.e and the 
old Tantalus-fable is told about you ; " i. e., Tantalus sees 
rivers which he cannot drink, and you only gaze at your gold 
instead of using it. That Browning quoted this passage 
is itself evidence that the view of this paper is correct, 

25 



ROBERT BROWNING 

tions ; and to illustrate the point tells the story of 
the steward who, finding he was likely to be dis- 
charged, falsified his employer's accounts in favor 
of his employer's debtors so that the debtors 
might receive him into their houses ; and the 
steward is commended by his employer for his 
dishonest act as having acted wisely. Now it is 
palpably absurd to suppose that the steward was 
commended for his dishonesty as dishonesty, or 
that in a broad sense he was held up as an ex- 
ample for us to regulate our conduct by ; but the 
dishonest act is looked at out of relation to mor- 
ality and general considerations, and commended 
from the mere standpoint of shrewdness. So the 
act of the Duke and the lady, if they had been 
more enterprising, may be and has been in the 
same way treated as outside of its ordinary moral 
relations. A commendable life involves two things ; 
first, a right purpose, and second, corresponding 
action. Both are requisite to the ''soldier-saint." 
"A noble thought unspoken," says Pericles, "is 
the same to the world as no thouffht at all." In 

o 

the case of Guido, Browning develops the impor- 
tance of a right aim in life ; in this poem, the 
importance of action is his theme, and he 
considers it by itself, as in the parable of the 
steward shrewdness was considered by itself. 

It is also to be observed that additional force 
is given to the moral lesson in each case by the 
unmorality of the story illustrating it. The rhetor- 
26 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

ical effect due to unexpectedness has already been 
illustrated where Satan is held up to Christian 
people as a commendable example of persistent 
effort. Christ means to say that if this cunning 
rascal of a steward had the forecast to provide 
for a temporal future, how much the more ought 
the truly wise to look out for an eternal future ; 
and Browning means us to consider that if in- 
action where the life-purpose is wrong leads to 
the sin of doing nothing, how much greater and 
more deplorable the like sin where a right life- 
purpose is similarly nullified. To prevent moral 
ideas from obtruding themselves and breaking this 
rhetorical effect, it becomes necessary that the 
scene of the story be laid in an ideal and un- 
moral world ; and in both of these parables great 
skill is shown in bringing out the inportant fea- 
tures of the picture in an atmosphere and against 
a background of unmorality. If, in consequence of 
the steward's act his master had fallen into finan- 
cial difificulties, committed suicide, or his family 
had starved to death, the moral question involved 
would have presented itself irresistibly, and we 
should not have stopped to admire the steward's 
shrewdness. It is, therefore, a fine touch in the 
Scripture narrative, that it is his defrauded lord 
who commended the unjust steward, thus indicat- 
ing that he did not seriously feel the financial loss, 
and giving us leisure to consider what a sharp and 
interesting person the steward was. So in Brown- 

27 



ROBERT BROWNING 

ing's poem wonderful art is shown in excluding 
from the reader's mind all moral considerations. 
First of all, the love of the Duke and the lady 
was not a sentiment growing out of acquaintance 
and proved congeniality — they never spoke a word 
to each other — and their soliloquies in describing 
their passion contain not a word of elevated sen- 
timent. The lady on the first day had "a pale 
brow spirit pure," if anybody knows what that 
means ; but the next we know about her the brow 
and chin were puckered and peaked with frustrate 
passion. The Duke became "straightway brave and 
wise" v/hen he saw the lady on the first day, but 
as he never did anything brave afterwards, nor 
anything wise except the very failure for which 
Browning condemns him, his exaltation must have 
been momentary. He puts his statue up only with 
the ignoble hope that men might say 

**How he would take his pleasure once ! " 
Moreover, it will be observed that there is no 
suggestion of any moral struggle against temptation 
either by the Duke or the lady. Had there been 
such a struggle and the temptation overcome. 
Browning would not have condemned them. Again, 
Browning contrives in some way to make the 
reader feel that Riccardi cared nothing for his 
wife, for the same literary motive that the Scrip- 
tural narrative makes us feel that the steward's 
master cared nothing for his money. Moreover, 
after the first day, the reader feels that the Duke 
28 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

and the lady are isolated from the rest of the 
world. It does not occur to us that the Duke 
might have had a wife, or was a monarch with an 
example to set to his subjects ; and we do not 
realize that there is any real world outside of these 
two persons except in the most shadowy way. It 
will be remembered that Adam Smith said that 
there would be no such thing as morality if there 
were only one person in the world. If there were 
only one man and one woman in the world there 
would be no such thing as sexual morality or im- 
morality. They would be like Adam and Eve, ipse 
facto married. The fact that the Duke and the 
lady failed to carry their purpose out has already 
been alluded to as leading our minds away from the 
general moral questions involved. There is only one 
suggestion of morality in the poem from beginning 
to end, and that occurs on the first day, in the lines 

(She checked herself and her eye grew dim) 
" My father tarries to bless my state : 
" I must keep it one day more for him. 

These are the sweetest lines in the whole compo- 
sition, and the only suggestion that the principal 
characters had any duty to the outside world 
whatever, and it is to be remembered that this 
thought occurred to the lady on the first day be- 
fore her purpose had become a life-purpose. 

I have already shown that the conduct of Ric- 
cardi in the matter was wholly justified by his 
position, and that he could not have got out of 

29 



ROBERT BROWNING 

his difficulties by divorce. It is perhaps worth 
noticing that in the ideal world of this poem, 
wherein the carrying out of one's purpose is the 
only virtue, and failure to do so the only vice, 
Riccardi is also justified. He carried his purpose 
out. Whether Browning intended so to justify 
him, I will not undertake to say. 

To the question whether Browning himself had 
a train of thought such as is set forth in this 
paper, I think he had, and will state the essayist's 
fancies as to the circumstances under which The 
Statue and the Bust was written. 

The recent Life of Tennyson, and the lives of 
all literary men, show the great difficulties under 
which their work is done. They have the constant 
interruption of curiosity-seekers, the call for auto- 
graphs, and much incense to inhale, in addition 
to the difficulties which beset all mankind who 
make efforts to escape the commonplace. The 
whole world seems to be in one vast conspiracy to 
make and keep us commonplace ; and if we con- 
sider a moment we shall see that under the laws 
of evolution the same environment must have a 
tendency to make people who are the products of 
environment precisely alike. The world's progress, 
however, grows out of individual differences, and 
the cultivation of those differences takes place 
against ceaseless opposition. What is usually called 
polish means not the furbishing up of these 
differences, but their obliteration. The only per- 
30 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

sonage who is exactly fitted to environment and 
exactly represents it, we will call Mrs. Grundy. 
Mrs. Grundy is worldly-wise, but she is never either 
too wise or too foolish, nor more than average 
virtuous or vicious, and she keeps, so to speak, 
a graded school, and we are her pupils. She is 
always afraid we shall commit ourselves to some- 
thing unusual ; and if we attempt any excursions 
out of the ordinary run, Mrs. Grundy plucks our 
gowns or our coat-tails, draws us back, and tells 
us to sit down and be little men and women. If 
we obey her mandate, we shall be indeed little 
men and little women. We somehow feel that this 
same Mrs. Grundy is of the earth earthy, and that 
when this scene of things is past, her final destin- 
ation is not the Celestial City, but that her last 
exit will be made through one of those numerous 
doors in the side of the hill of which Bunyan tells 
us ; but while the world lasts she is a mighty 
power, and only makes life easy for those whose 
"table 's a hat, and whose prize a dram." A man 
like Browning who is writing for immortality must 
close his ears and start on the run like Bunyan's 
Pilgrim shouting "Eternal life ! Eternal life !" or the 
"world and its ways" will prove too strong for him. 
All this must have been pressed upon Browning 
every day of his life ; and I surmise that when in 
Florence he went to see the statue, and on the 
Duke's face read weakness of character. He doubt- 
less considered also the fact to which I have 

31 



ROBERT BROWNING 

adverted, that Riccardi could not have kept the 
lovers apart in such an age if they had been very 
enterprising. He therefore mused that they must 
have been tied down by the same "world and its 
ways" which were such an obstacle to him, and 
perceived that it was a general truth that failure 
to strive meant life-failure whether the life-purpose 
be right or wrong. The subtlety involved in the 
paradox took his fancy. So he decided to tell this 
story as a parable to portray that lesson ; and when 
in the last lines he says to the person of worthy 
purpose, ''Thou art the man !" he meant to 
include himself in the general condemnation. 

His method of deahng with the original story is 
very instructive. This story, according to the 
Browning Cyclopedia, was simply that the Duke 
was in love with the lady, but not that she returned 
it ; that her husband for her protection kept her 
within doors, and the Duke frequently rode by the 
Palace to get a glimpse of her, and finally set up 
his statue looking towards the Palace in a way to 
indicate his admiration of the lady and his con- 
tempt for Riccardi. The bust appears to have 
been no part of the original story. Browning added 
all the other details in order to make the guilty 
passion of the parties the main purpose of both 
lives, just as poetry was the main purpose of his 
life ; and while the original story had for its back- 
ground the real world with its accompanying moral 
considerations, Browning substituted an ideal back- 
32 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

ground suppressing everything suggesting moral 
considerations. In short, Browning both by his 
additions and his suppressions made the story over 
into the conventional parable adapted to his special 
purpose ; and how closely it is modelled after the 
Scriptural parable named can be shown by trans- 
forming the latter so that it would read in sub- 
stance thus : that the steward was a defaulter for 
his own benefit and knew he would sometime be 
found out and discharged ; that he always intended 
to provide against the evil day by further frauds 
in behalf of his master's debtors so as to lay them 
under obligations to him ; that he neglected to do 
so ; that he was finally detected and discharged ; 
that he was unable to dig and to beg he was 
ashamed, and not having made any friends starved 
to death. If the steward had defrauded his lord 
as planned he would have been no worse off — he 
would only have been discharged ; and since his 
failure to do so was due to negligence, and not 
principle, he was no better for it in sight of 
God \ and therefore he is to be condemned. The 
Scriptural parable thus reversed teaches the same 
lesson as the original, and is almost exactly like 
Browning's parable ; but it will be observed that 
Browning could not reverse his parable so as to con- 
form to the Scriptural parable, because the steward 
acted, and his theme was the sin of inaction. 

That my solution of the poem is substantially 
correct I have no serious misgiving ; but, as I have 

33 



ROBERT BROWNING 

a reason to suppose it is not the usual one, I ask 
leave to recur again to the boy that won so much 
money at craps. This boy could be commended 
by the Herald for his thrift, and by Browning for 
playing the game boldly and skilfully if he played 
at all ; and yet without inconsistency be repre- 
hended by both for gambling. But Browning's 
puzzle is more subtle than this. He would say 
further that if the boy was resolved to lead a gam- 
bler's life and nothing else, from the single stand- 
point of avoiding the sin of doing nothing — the 
sin of wasting the gift of life, it would be his duty 
to gamble ; but without inconsistency he could add 
that looked at from every point of view it was his 
duty on the whole not to gamble ; and I believe 
he would have said so. Such a consideration ex- 
pressed in the poem, however, would have spoiled 
it as a work of art. It is only necessary to 
classify the composition correctly, and there is 
nothing in Browning or Browning's ideas that calls 
for explanation. The essayist will add that to his 
mind the poem thus classified becomes more 
interesting than before, and as sound in its morals 
as it is subtle in thought and skilful in execution. 



The foregoing is a paper slightly abridged read be- 
fore the Browning Society many years ago ; and the 
following is a summary of an off-hand talk before 
the same Society a few years later on an "Ex-Pres- 
idents Day ;" and both together were combined in 

34 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

a paper afterwards for the Brookline Thursday Club. 
At the time when the original essay was given 
I was perplexed by the following lines ; 

So! While these wait the trump of doom, 
How do their spirits pass, I wonder, 
Nights and days in the narrow room ? 

Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder 
What a gift life was, ages ago. 
Six steps out of the chapel yonder. 

Only they see not God, I know, 

Nor all that chivalry of His, 

The soldier-saints who, row on row, 

Burn upward each to his point of bliss. 

It will be observed that Browning "supposes" 
that the spirits of the Duke and the lady are re- 
pining at the thought of a wasted life, but "knows" 
that they do not "see God," /. <f., that they are in 
hell or purgatory, unless his supposition be correct ; 
and this seems to imply a third place of retribu- 
tion in the under world of which I knew nothing. 
My second difficulty was that Browning associated 
burning in the next world with bliss, which did 
not accord with my New England bringing up. No 
commentator on this much discussed poem threw 
any light as to either difficulty, or seemed to no- 
tice that any difficulty existed ; but I was none the less 
certain that Browning meant something special in the 
lines named which, if ascertained, would lend impor- 
tant aid to a true understanding of the whole poem. 

All things come to those that wait. One evening I 
picked up Maria Rosetti's Shadow of Dante wherein 

35 



ROBERT BROWNING 

she sets out the philosophy of Dante's Divine Comedy, 
and at the beginning calls attention to the Ante-Hell, 
i. e., the outskirts just inside the gates, as the place 
assigned to the angels who, when Satan rebelled, took 
part v/ith neither side ; and with them were spirits 
from earth who during life shirked responsibility, were 
Laodiceans, neither good nor bad, who did nothing and 
were nothing. "Mercy and justice scorn them both ; " 
relatively to those in Hell proper they were not pun- 
ished,* but simply thrown into the rubbish heap ; and 
they found a do-nothing eternity so insupportable that 
they believed the torments of hell would be preferable. 
This so exactly fitted the case of the Duke and the 
Lady that I at once conjectured that the Ante-Hell 
was the third place where Browning "supposed" them 
to be, or their place of destination if they were not 
already there ; and I felt certain examination would 
show that Dante believed the souls of the blest to be 
fire, and that the happier they were the brighter they 
flamed. Investigation showed such to be the case. 

Before citing passages bearing on the questions in- 
volved, it should be noticed that Dante's astronomy 
was that of Ptolemy, as Dante preceded Copernicus 
about two centuries. He supposed the earth to be 
flat, stationary, and of vast and unknown extent, 
and that the heavenly bodies revolved about it. 
The sun and moon were reckoned as planets, in 



* Probably Browning, like most of us, would not believe 
punishment in the future life to be physical, and would re- 
gard the hornets in Ante-Hell as representing mental stings. 

36 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

addition to the five then known, and together were 
supposed to be in the following order ; the Moon, Ve- 
nus, Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. These 
planets to Dante were all Heavens ; and next beyond 
was the Heaven of the fixed stars ; and beyond all was 
the abiding place of God, which was moveless. Hell 
and Purgatory were in the under world whence God 
could not be seen ; but the several Heavens were all 
abodes of bliss, though in different degrees ; those most 
remote from earth being most in God's presence, and 
therefore the most blissful. Dante's guide through 
Hell and Purgatory was Virgil, who did not undergo 
any special punishment, but was held in the under 
world because he died before Christ brought redemp- 
tion — imprisoned, so to speak, with the "liberty of 
the yard" — and could not take him to any of the 
Heavens. Dante's guide in the Heavens was Beatrice. 
The lines following are all from Gary's transla- 
tion of the Divine Comedy. At the Ante-Hell Dante 
inquires who occupy it, they seeming unhappy though 
not undergoing obvious punishment, and Virgil replies, 

"This miserable fate 
Suffer the wretched souls of those who lived 
Without or praise or blame, with that ill band 
Of angels mixed who nor rebellious proved 
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves 
Were only. From his bounds Heaven drove them forth 
Not to impair His lustre; nor the depth 
Of Hell receives them, lest the accursed tribe 

i {i. e., the rebels) 

Should glory thence with exultation vain." 

I then: "Master, what doth aggrieve them thus, 

S7 



ROBERT BROWNING 

That they lament so loud ? " He straight replied : 
"That will I tell thee briefly. These of death 
No hope may entertain : and their blind life 
So meanly passes that all other lots 
They envy. Fame of them the world hath none, 
Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. 
Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by." 

As Dante passes on he recognizes among them 
one person only, supposed to have been a pope who 
in time of danger ignominiously resigned his office. 
That Dante believed spirits in Heaven were 
fire is manifest everywhere. St. Peter, James, 
John, and Adam are thus described ; 

Before mine eyes stood the four torches lit : 

And that that first hadcomebeganto wax (/.^., St. Peter) 

In brightness. 

Of St. Peter he says again ; 

From that which I did note in beauty most 
Excelling, saw I issue forth a flame 
So bright that none was left more goodly there. 
Round Beatrice thrice it wheeled about 
With so divine a song that fancy's ear 
Records it not ; and the pen passeth on. 
And leaves a blank ; for that our mortal speech, 
Nor e'en the inward shaping of the brain, 
Hath colors fine enough to trace such folds. 
Of St. James he says elsewhere ; 

Such cheering accents from the second flame 
Assured me. 

He says of Thomas Aquinas; 

Soon as its final words the blessed flame 
Had raised for utterance. 

Even the Virgin Mary is fire ; 

Therefore were mine eyes 
Unequal to pursue the crowned flame 
That towering rose and sought the seed it bore. 
38 



THE STATUE AND THE BUST 

That the happier the souls the brighter they 
burned is shown by the following passages ; 
I said and turned 
Toward the lustre that with greeting kind 
Erewhile had hailed me. Forthwith, brighter far 
Than erst it waxed: and, as himself the sun 
Hides through excess of light, when his warm gaze 
Hath on the mantle of thick vapors preyed. 
Within its proper shape the saintly form 
Was, through increase of gladness, thus concealed; 
And, shrouded so in splendor, answered me. 

That other joyance meanwhile waxed 
A thing to marvel at, in splendor glowing 
Like choicest ruby stricken by the sun. 
For, in that upper clime, effulgence comes 
Of gladness, as here laughter ; and below 
As the mind saddens, murkier grows the shade. 

Of Beatrice he says ; 

Meseemed 
That while she spake her image all did burn ; 
And in her eyes such fulness was of joy 
As I am fain to pass unconstrued by. 

But of Beatrice at thought of sin he says ; 
Such color as the sun 
At eve or morning paints an adverse cloud. 
Then saw I sprinkled over all the sky. 
And as the unblemished dame, who, in herself 
Secure of censure, yet at bare report 
Of others failing, shrinks with maiden fear. 
So Beatrice in her semblance changed : 
And such eclipse in Heaven, methinks, was seen 
When the most holy suffered. 

In the Heaven of Mars he saw the soldier-saints, 
Joshua, Judas Maccabeus, Charlemagne, Duke God- 
frey, and others who had fought for the cross ; 
and among other crusaders sees his own great- 

39 



ROBERT BROWNING 

great-grandfather, who hearing Dante's words is 
delighted, and is thus described ; 

As embers at the breathing of the wind 
Their flame enliven ; so that light I saw 
Shine at my blandishments. 

These passages from Dante not only solve my 
difficulties in the lines of Browning, but show that 
he borrowed from Dante both thought and imagery. 
Like the Duke and the Lady, Dante was a Floren- 
tine, and fought for the Guelphs in the domestic 
wars ; and it is worth noting that in a later line Brown- 
ing's ''coin" bears the "stamp of the very Guelph." 

To the question whether the light thus thrown 
on Browning's poem leads to any change in the 
original essay, I answer ''No." The poem is still 
a parable, to be construed not broadly but nar- 
rowly, as teaching a single lesson. The Duke and 
the Lady are undergoing the appropriate punish- 
ment for the sin of doing nothing, are repining over 
the lives they had utterly wasted. They may be so 
dissatisfied with the Ante-Hell as to wish themselves 
in Hell proper; but if the change were made they 
would speedily wish themselves back again ; for Dante 
represents the penalty for sexual offense as severe, 
befitting one of the seven deadly sins. Nor do I 
think I was mistaken as to Browning's motive in 
writing the poem ; but as he clearly had Dante in 
mind, it is not improbable that in considering the 
Ante-Hell he started with the intention of depicting 
his leading characters as fit for that final destination. 
40 



MOLINISM AND THE MOLINISTS 



MOLINISM AND THE MOLINISTS 



IN Paradise Lost Milton tells us that certain of 
the devils in Hell sat apart 

"and reasoned high 
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate; 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute ; 
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 

Swedenborg, on the other hand, reports visits to 
Heaven where he had interviews with Luther and 
Calvin, St. Augustine, and many others worth know- 
ing. Luther he found had one small room to which 
a limited number of spirits resorted who were inter- 
ested in his doctrine that man was saved by grace 
alone. Calvin he found had begun his life in the 
spiritual world by preaching predestination ; but his 
audiences were so small that he had given it up, 
and kept in a corner and said nothing. 

Now the subject I was requested to take up today 
and explain, /. e., Molinism and the Molinists, in- 
volves precisely that class of question which, if we 
believe the evidence, interests devils rather than 
saints; but this is a long suffering society, and 

45 



MOLINISM 

peradventure will be supported in listening for 
fifteen or twenty minutes, by thought of the poor 
devils who must endure it so much longer. 

Perhaps it is well to say at the outset that Luis 
Molina, who founded the Molinists, taught the free- 
dom of the human will, and its efficacy within limits 
in working out man's salvation ; and in order to 
show wherein that was deemed heresy, it is necessary 
to state the doctrines of the Christian church when 
he came upon the scene ; and before that to make a 
brief statement of the elementary philosophy which 
was the background of those doctrines. 

If we believe in our own existence, and the exis- 
tence of the world about us, the law of cause and ef- 
fect compels us to hold that what now is was caused 
by what was the moment before, and that by what 
was the preceding moment, and so on without end. 
There never was a time when the universe was an 
empty universe, for if so it would always have re- 
mained empty. The thought is almost appalling that 
something must have been eternal, and that some- 
thing able to cause all that is, that has been, and that 
ever will be. There are three thinkable theories as 
to what that eternal something was. The materialist 
says it was matter with the forces such as gravity and 
chemical affinity which we call material forces ; and 
that our minds, feelings, emotions, are actions or 
functions of matter. Under this theory man is the 
product and sport of the cosmic machine, and the 
freedom of his will impossible. The theistic con- 

46 



AND THE MOLINISTS 

ception is that the eternal something is personal, /. e., 
God, and that God created matter and the material 
world out of nothing; and centuries before Mrs. 
Eddy, many took a further step and believed that 
matter is nothing, other than a figment of the mind. 
The third conception of the universe is that both 
God and matter existed from eternity ; and that God 
either is the soul of the material universe, which is 
pantheism, or else that God created the world out of 
matter as eternal as himself ; and that the evils of the 
world are inherent in matter, and God unable to pre- 
vent them. All these theories involve difficulties, but 
to human apprehension one of the three must be 
true ; and they, with their several peculiar objections, 
enter into every religion and religious controversy. 
We have to deal only with the theistic or Christian 
conception, and the deductions from it which have 
been the basis of creeds. In the first place, if 
everything in the universe except himself is God's 
creation, his sovereignty must be complete, and he 
omnipotent. He must know everything in and about 
the universe, and thus be omniscient ; he must know 
how his creations will operate, and therefore have 
complete foreknowledge ; and, since whatever God 
foresees is inevitable, it seems to follow that it is 
predestinated and done on a prearranged plan that 
is unchangeable ; and that, in the last analysis, God 
is the cause of everything. If this belief be carried 
to its logical conclusion, God is the author of sin, 
and man in a world of fatalism, and his will subject 

47 



MOLINISM 

to an iron destiny as absolute as under the determin- 
ist doctrine of the materialist. John Locke, whose 
philosophical work is world-famous, says that he fully 
believes in divine omnipotence and omniscience, 
and also in human free will, but cannot reconcile 
those beliefs. Here let me say once for all that the 
above conclusions growing out of the theistic con- 
ception of the origin of things v/ere not primarily 
dogmas of the Christian church, but were fundam.en- 
tal inferences of philosophy ; and the problem of 
human free will and human responsibility is centuries 
older than the Christian rehgion. The Stoics, for 
example, and Zeno their founder, were pantheists 
and fatalists ; and among the Jews, who were not 
Christians, the Sadducees held to absolute free will ; 
but the Pharisees who were the more learned and 
thoughtful class, denied it. It is worth noting that 
St. Paul was a Pharisee of the straightest sect, and 
born and educated in Tarsus which was a principal 
university town of the Stoic philosophy, and may 
thus have started with a bias in favor of his later 
doctrine of predestination. 

Of the first two centuries of this era we know little 
of Christian thought ; but up to about the year 400 
the main subject discussed was the Trinity; and 
every phase of that subject which has existed since 
was taught with such acrimony that the Greek church 
split away from the Roman ; and the latter became 
content to regard the Trinity as a sacred mystery, 
and forbade the further discussion of it. In the year 
48 



AND THE MOLINISTS 

354 St. Augustine was born, and he turned the cur- 
rent of thought into an entirely new channel, /. e.^ 
the relation of God to man ; and his teachings briefly 
summed up were that God was everything and man 
nothing. God was infinite and man finite ; and thus 
between the two existed what mathematicians call 
the infinite ratio, /. e., any finite quantity is zero as 
compared vv'ith an infinite quantity; and he held as 
a matter of course that the world was created out of 
nothing — the de nihilo being expressly insisted on — 
and therefore held equally of course that God had all 
the attributes and powers philosophy had deduced 
from that assumption. Consistently with the pre- 
arranged-plan-theory he taught predestination and 
election, /. c, that before the foundations of the 
world some were elected to salvation and others left 
to certain reprobation ; and the ethical difficulty in- 
volved he met by the doctrine of original sin. "You 
are born guilty of the sin of Adam," he says. "You 
have no power to do anything good or right or pleas- 
ing to God, so you must cast yourself wholly on Him 
for pardon and salvation." Men therefore must be 
punished eternally not for what they did but for what 
they were, though not personally responsible for what 
they were. He taught unre^^ervedly that a man's elec- 
tion did not depend upon God's foreknowledge of 
what he was to be, but was purely arbitrary ; and he 
and his successors used one argument the force of 
which must be admitted, namely, the manifest in- 
equalities in this world, inequalities often determined 

49 



MOLINISM 

by birth and wholly irrespective of merit. Those of 
us who know our bible — and it is to be presumed 
that even the waiting list of the Browning Society 
know that — are aware that St. Paul used the same ar- 
gument to the same point, instancing the decree of 
God before the birth of Esau and Jacob — before 
either had any merit, says St. Paul — that the elder 
should serve the younger. St. Augustine had a cele- 
brated controversy with one Pelagius wherein we find 
his views as to the freedom of the will so far as re- 
lates to salvation. As to the elect he taught that 
God's grace, when vouchsafed to a man, was irresist- 
able, and his will subjected to God's will; and as to 
the unelect he held, so to speak, that their wills were 
mortgaged by the sin of Adam, so that they could 
not by any possibility will anything acceptable to 
God. Thus in both cases men were coerced by causes 
over which they had no control. I have been specific 
about this, for predestinationists have been vocifer- 
ous that they did not dispute the freedom of the 
will, that in both cases men did what they wished to 
do ; but such freedom is like that of a jack-in-the- 
box, which is so made that it cannot move while held 
down, and cannot help jumping out when you snap 
the cover. In his youth Augustine had been disso- 
lute, and his conversion so remarkable that it seemed 
to him miraculous, and that neither his merits nor 
will had anything to do with it. 

St. Augustine's creed and views were published in 
various books between the years 395 and 425, were 
50 



AND THE MOLINISTS 

adopted by the Roman church, and accepted without 
serious public question for nearly twelve hundred 
years, when in 1587 Luis Molina published the 
book which started the Molinist controversy. Before 
Molina's day Calvin and Luther had come and gone ; 
but it will be borne in mind that the protestants did 
not protest against the doctrines of the Roman 
church, but against the way it was administered ; 
Henry VIII made no doctrinal protest, but main- 
tained that he and not the pope was head of the Eng- 
lish church — his real protest being that he wanted an- 
other wife. Most protestant creeds even down to my 
youth were Augustinian in vital points ; and Luther, 
Calvin, and our own New England divine, Jonathan 
Edwards, outdid St. Augustine, at least in explicit- 
ness. Augustine balked on two points that did credit 
to his heart if not his logic. The first was as to the 
so-called damnation of infants, which would seem 
to follow from their being born guilty of the sin of 
Adam ; but he held that they could be saved if bap- 
tised before death ; and the Roman church is still 
most scrupulous that such baptism shall be adminis- 
tered. The second point was that Adam's will was 
free, for he shrank from believing God the author of 
sin ; and to this Calvin also agreed. All these men, 
their creed notwithstanding, were humanized by be- 
ing out in the great world ; but Jonathan Edwards 
was a tragedy. He was pastor of the church in 
Northampton more than a hundred years ago when 
his parish consisted of straggling farm-houses, was 

51 . 



MOLINISAf 

without intellectual companionship, or means to own 
books, with an inherited creed, a controversial na- 
ture, and a logical faculty seldom equalled. He balked 
at nothing. That Adam should have real freedom, 
and yet God have foreknowledge of what Adam was 
to do, he saw was an unthinkable proposition, and 
therefore said that Adam was no more free than any- 
body else ; that in a certain sense he was free, but 
so made that without divine interference he was 
certain to go wrong, and God did not interfere be- 
cause he intended that Adam should go wrong. God 
was thus the author of sin — a serious fact demanding 
explanation ; and he explained it by falsifying the 
meaning of the word ''justice." He said that God had 
the attribute of justice, with no chance to exercise that 
attribute unless he created the wicked to discrimin- 
ate against ] and their punishment must be eternal 
because His justice is eternal, and because their sin 
is infinite as committed against an infinite being ; 
and he and his predecessors agreed that the elect 
were few, and the great mass of mankind irrevocably 
doomed. To illustrate man's nothingness in the 
scales of God he compared us to the dust that settles 
on scales when objects are weighed ; and he says that 
God only loves himself, and does nothing except for 
his own satisfaction and glory, and has no love even 
for the elect except for what of himself he finds in 
them ; that Christ did not die for man but only for the 
elect ; and as to Adam's sin, he said that Adam's 
descendants were Adam. As there is a continuity of 
52 



AND THE MOLINISTS 

one life from the first oak-tree to the acorn and from 
that acorn to another oak, so, we ; and therefore 
Adam's sin is our sin, and ours Adam's. The bliss of 
God, and of the elect in heaven, must be perfect, 
and therefore he taught unreservedly that they and 
God would delight in the punishment of the unelect, 
so much would they glory in God's eternal justice. 
It is evident that making men sin in order to punish 
them would not be justice, but unadulterated cruelty ; 
and it is not surprising that his hearers who could 
not get away from his logic felt that without their 
fault tliey had been born into a hideous world, and 
shrieked, fainted, and went into convulsions in 
church. Browning's Caliban from sheer incapacity 
could only make out his Setebos a selfish and mali- 
cious brute ; and it was left to one of the most gifted 
and saintly of men to set up for worship a demon. 
St. Augustine and other great predestinationists, 
though using in some ways a different road, held the 
same views as to the unelect, but dive/t more on the 
joys of the elect ; but Edwards doubtless felt that it 
was the sick who needed the physician. 

Upon the Augustinian system, intrenched in the 
belief for more than a thousand years of the most 
devout and greatest men of each generation, Luis 
Molina made the first determined assault, and the 
first attempt to harmonize God's predestination and 
man's free will. He was a Spanish Jesuit, and 
professor in a seminary in Madrid; and in 1587 
published a folio in monkish Latin, the title of which 

53 



MOLINISM 

freely translated is, Free Will Consistent with the 
Gift of Grace, Diviiie Fo7'eknowledge , Divine Plan, 
and Predestination. He contended that the will is 
always free, and that man can do morally good 
works without the help of more grace than is vouch- 
safed to all, and raise himself to acts of hope, faith, 
love, and repentance ; that at this point God by the 
merits of Christ will grant saving grace to such as 
ask it in sincerity, and thereby the man becomes 
sanctified ; that foreknowledge does not interfere 
with man's freedom, nor make events happen, but 
that God forsees what will happen, and how his 
proffered grace will be received, and on that fore- 
knowledge founds his predestinating decrees. The 
Jesuits, it will be remembered, were missionaries all 
over the world ; and doubtless the heathen met the 
doctrines they preached by answering that if men 
were elected to salvation they would be saved any- 
how, 2.nd if elected to reprobation they could not 
help themselves ; and therefore the Jesuit preaching 
was vain, and its faith was also vain. Mrs. Stowe in 
her Minister's Wooing represents the young people 
of New England as resorting to precisely that argu- 
ment; and I personally was reared in a Calvinistic 
atmosphere, and carried confusion into the camp by 
so arguing myself. There is no reply to it. Denial 
of free will and its efficacy denies human responsi- 
bility, and paralyzes every incentive to human action. 
It was natural, therefore that the Jesuits should be 
led to reconsider the theology of St. Augustine, and 
54 



AND THE MOLINISTS 

see if modifications could not be found adapting 
it better to missionary needs. Molina's treatise 
was Avarmly espoused by the Jesuits, and by Henry 
IV, king of France ; but the Dominicans and 
other Catholics raised a tempest that is not wholly 
subsided yet, the particular heresy claimed being that 
it made the divine will to some extent dependent on 
man's will, and therefore was inconsistent with God's 
sovereignty. The pope, Clement VIII, in 1594 en- 
joined silence in vain; and in 1598 called a council 
to consider the question, and is believed to have 
really sided with the Dominicans ; but after sixty- 
five meetings and thirty-seven disputations in his 
presence, he died without rendering a decision. His 
successor in the popedom lived but twenty-one days ; 
but his successor, Paul V, took the subject up, and 
between September, 1605, and February, 1606, had 
seventeen meetings in his presence. He too would 
have preferred to condemn Molinism, and it is said a 
decree to that effect was actually drawn up ; but the 
papacy was under great obligations to the Jesuits, 
and was afraid of Henry IV ; and on August 29, 
1607, he sent the disputants home saying he would 
render a decision in due time, and meanwhile for- 
bade either party to call the other heretics. In 161 1 
he prohibited further discussion of the question. 

No direct decision was ever rendered, but in- 
directly the question came up half a century later in 
the Jansenist controversy. Jansen was a thorough Au- 
gustinian, and pubHshed a book entitled Aiigustinus 

55 



MOLINISM 

to withstand the Molinist movement ; and under 

Jesuit influence five propositions said to be found in 

his book were pronounced heretical by Innocent X ; 

but the Jansenists contended that no such tenets 

were in his book, at least in the sense in which they 

had been condemned. The next pope declared 

those condemned doctrines were in the bock ; but 

the Jansenists then said that while the pope was 

suprem.e in matters of faith he had no special 

authority in matters of fact. The Jesuits exerted 

their influence with every pope thereafter for some 

decisive condemnation; and the contest was in an 

acute stage in the pontificate of Innocent XII, who 

was the pope of T/ie Ring and tiie Book. He no 

doubt, was at heart a Jansenist, /. ^., an Augustinian. 

He thinks the world is deteriorating ; and in his 

decision against Guido is made by Browning to say ; 

Such is, for the Augustin that was once 
This Canon Caponsacchi we see now. 

The pope approves of Caponsacchi and emphasizes 
that approval by comparing him with St. Augustine, 
but still says the latter would not have brought scan- 
dal on the church by so great imprudence. On 
the same page after enumerating the viciousness of 
Guido's brother, the Abate, who he has declared 
worse than Guido himself, he says ; 

There 's Loyola adapted to our time. 
Loyola was the founder of the Jesuit order ; and 
those two passages clearly are meant by Browning to 
show that the pope in the privacy of his own chamber 

56 



AND THE MOLINISTS 

approved of the Jansenists and hated the Jesuits.* 
Thirteen years after his death a new pope, Clement 
XI, was found pHable enough to issue the historic 
bull, Unigenitus, condemning Jansenism, even where 
he had followed Augustine literally ; and in that in- 
direct way the triumph of Molinism and the Jesuits 
was complete. I am told that Molina's treatise is still 
taught in Jesuit schools, and that most of the Catholic 
clergy are Molinists, or, as his views are more 
commonly expressed by Protestants, are Arminians ; 
for Arminius was some twenty-five years younger 
than Molina, and adopted his tenets so far as is 
pertinent to this paper. 

Ranke in his history of the popes says of Molina's 
treatise that it is intelligible, acute, superficial, and 
therefore could not fail to have considerable success. 
It is superficial ; for if God foreknows before the 
foundations of the world how men are to exercise 
their wills and predestinates accordingly, every 
man's fate is sealed before the foundations of the 
world. It is true that God's foreknowledge does not 

* The following passage in The Ring and the Book 
shows the same thing; 

'Twas he who first bade leave those souls in peace, 
Those Jansenists, re-nicknamed Molinists: 
"Leave them alone," bade he, "Those Molinists! 
" Who may have other light than we perceive, 
"Or why does the whole world hate them thus." 
He means that the Jansenist brand of heretic may 
have some justification. The reserve with which he thus 
expresses himself in public is fitting when we reflect that 
Jansenism had been provisionally condemned by two of 
his predecessors, and that the matter might be brought 
formally before him for final adjudication. 

57 



MOLINISM 

make events happen, but God makes them happen; 
and God has made the man, soul and all, out of 
nothing according to the postulate with which we 
started, and caused all the circumstances which de- 
termine man's will; and to call that will free is a 
mere mystification of words. Molina begged the 
whole question in assuming that God's foreknowledge 
and man's freedom could coexist; and the latest 
Encyclopcedia Britannica tells us that that is the whole 
difficulty with the question ; and the solution of it is 
no nearer today than at the davm of history. 

Repugnant as predestination is to the natural man, 
and even to what we believe is best in us, it must be 
conceded that the argument for it is hard to meet, 
and that on purely philosophic grounds ; and proba- 
bly there are elements in the problem not yet vouch- 
safed to man to know. I do not believe in it ; nor 
do I beheve that men and women are mere puppets. 
The whole doctrine is contrary to the foundation 
principle of ethics, and the whole atmosphere of the 
teachings of Christ ; and perhaps the saving fact has 
always been that men believed it on Sundays and 
forgot it the balance of the week. As to Browning, 
we know that he fairly exulted in man's will and in 
his persistent, heroic effort; and though I am the 
only ex-president who is not a preacher, and only, 
to use a phrase of our erring sisters, a mere man, 
I will venture to add that it behooves us to 
believe that somehow or other we have that real 
freedom which involves responsibihty, and that 
God is just with that justice which is the real thing. 
58 



AND THE MOLINISTS 

NOTE. 
*' Moliiiism" as used by Browning refers to the teachings 
of two different persons, Molina, and Molinos. The teach- 
ings of the latter, prior to the publication of IVie Ring 
and the Book, was called "Molinosism;" but Browning 
includes both in the one word, and means "heresy." For 
example, when Caj^onsacchi speaks of the priest's duty to 
"weed the church of Molinism," he means by it to weed 
out, not one particular heresy, but heresy in general. 
Molina's views had borne in popular speech the stigma 
of heresy for about a hundred years prior to the time of 
Guide's condemnation, and those of Molinos about twenty 
years; and when Browning speaks of Molinist as a re- 
nickname he means that the old term for heresy had been 
given a new application. All that is known of the teach- 
ings of Molinos — and it is very little — can be found in a 
small volume by John Bigelow published some thirty 
years ago (now out of print), called Molinos the Qaietist; 
and the important parts of it are brief extracts from 
diaries and private letters. The charges against Molinos 
include other things besides heresy; and while Bigelow 
evidently believes he was unjustly condemned, he admits 
that the facts are obscure. At all events his cult lasted 
a few years, and disappeared without leaving a ripple. 
Ranke in his history of the popes, and other histories of 
the time, do not mention even the name of Molinos, and 
his doctrines play no part whatever in The Ring- and the 
Book. The publication of Molina's book, on the other 
hand, was a landmark in religious thought, and the issues 
he raised do play a part in that poem, and are of uni- 
versal interest as involved in the perennial question of 
fate and free will. As my paper was supposed to be 
limited to twenty minutes, I decided to confine it to the 
Molinism of Luis Molina. I will add that I do not 
agree with much that is set out in the Brozvning Guide- 
Book in this connection, and in particular in the estimates 
of popes Innocent XI and Innocent XII, but regard the 
latter the stronger man of the two, and precisely what 
Browning describes him. 

59 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 
IN SOCIAL SERVICE 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 
IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

THE SUBJECT of today's paper taken in con- 
nection with the question* that follows it seems 
to be purely ethical, involving the inquiry whether 
service to society is better for giver or receiver if 
entirely unselfish, or whether interested motives are 
permissible ; and if interested motives are permis- 
sible, but only under certain limitations, the question 
comes as to what those limitations are, and where 
self-interest ought to begin and leave off. These 
questions, and others that suggest themselves, are 
likely to be answered better by some essayist a thou- 
sand years hence than is possible today; for while 
there is much disinterestedness in the world, it has, as 
compared with selfishness, played an insignificant part 
in human affairs hitherto, and been studied very little. 
The ethical problem involved will be much sim- 
plified if we answer first the more fundamental ques- 
tion whether selfishness is necessarily wrong ; and 
this in turn opens up the whole subject of evolution. 

* This subject for a paper before the Browning Society 
in 1902 was assigned coupled with the question whether 
service to the world was better for giver and receiver if 
gratuitous; thus giving the title a wider significance than 
appeared upon its face. 

63 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

Darwin's doctrine of the survival of the fittest teaches 
us that in the earlier stages of the world when the 
types of animated life were low, selfishness of the 
grossest sort was the one indispensible condition of 
existence — all struggled to survive, and such as 
outstripped their competitors in the race for life had 
little concern as to who took the hindermost. But 
when animal life grew into higher forms, the struggle 
for existence was aided for such as could combine for 
mutual protection ; and while selfishness was the 
basis of such combination it was a far-sighted selfish- 
ness, and substituted the common good for immediate 
individual good ; and combination was only possible 
when individuals had such moral qualities as to 
inspire mutual trust. Wolves, says Huxley, could 
never have hunted in packs unless there had been a 
tacit agreement that they would not attack each other 
during the chase ; and human beings could never 
combine in states and communities except for moral 
qualities such that individuals can depend on the good 
faith of one another to a very considerable extent. 
The word "civilization" is shown by its etymology to 
imply the possession of qualities rendering it possible 
for mankind to combine under a civil government; 
that is, possession of moral qualities. Morality, how- 
ever, at the outset did not involve what we consider 
its most important part, that is, moral sentiment or 
feeling, but was limited to conduct. We can hardly 
conceive of a pack of wolves as governed by moral 
feeling ; and the Homeric peoples, so far as the 

64. 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

mental state entered into the matter at all, were, so 
to speak, honest only because it was the best policy. 
Homer has no word for justice, law, right, as we un- 
derstand the terms, and the words which in later Greek 
had those meanings signify in Homer "custom," or 
"usage ;" and in Latin the word "mores," which in 
refined ages meant morals, in its origin meant 
customs, merely, without implying moral sense. All 
such words referred to a practice conformed to 
rather than a feeling as inspiring it ; but out of the 
practice altruistic feelings grew up, as the feeling of 
love grew between parent and child, and are none the 
less noble or binding because they are the outgrowth 
of evolution : nor are the practices less noble because 
we have learned to conform to them voluntarily. 
Thus Darwin's law, which in its essence is purely 
selfish, comes to include altruism as an equally 
essential element, and to that extent the government 
of the world is shown to be a moral government. 

We thus see that selfishness has a very ancient and 
respectable lineage being the elder child of nature 
herself, while disinterestedness is later born ; and 
although the more highly organized of the two, and 
the object of endless solicitude, disinterestedness is 
even yet much the less vigorous, having been, so to 
speak, brought up on the bottle, while selfishness is 
Nature's nursling ; and unless we accept the doctrine 
that nature is accursed we can hardly conclude that 
regard for self is utterly wrong. We are fain to hope 
it is not, for otherwise we should most of us be like 

65 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

the Indian, only good when we are dead ; and it will 
be the endeavor of this paper to show that in fact 
consideration of self-interest is right, and even a 
duty, within certain limitations, and disinterestedness 
is only right within certain limitations ; that both 
need to be chasened by wisdom and justice. 

To test the question v/hether consideration of self 
is ever proper, let us assume for a moment that the 
opposite is true, and that disinterestedness ought to 
be complete. Then assuming further that a particular 
person always sacrifices himself for others, it follows 
that those others must accept this sacrifice ; and we 
cannot help asking what is the effect on them? If 
such self-sacifice leads to what is best in character 
and conduct, the receiver is deprived of what is best 
in character and conduct ; and we thus come to a 
contradiction of terms, for self-sacrifice in its effects 
has become the refinemicnt of selfishness, and the 
acceptance of self-sacrifice the quintessence of self- 
renunciation ; in short, we run straight into one of 
those absurdities which shows that our original as- 
sumption must have been wrong. This argument is not 
merely academic ; for have we not sometimes seen in 
actual life one member of a family who always gives 
way to the others, and the bad effect on the character 
of the others ? Lodge, in his Life of Webster, accounts 
for the remissness of that statesman in paying his bills 
— even debts to his laundress and the really poor — as 
due to the sacrifices of his family in early life to get the 
means to educate him. He came to regard it the nat- 
66 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

ural and proper thing for others to look out for him fin- 
ancially, and that he was without responsibility in such 
matters. In point of fact overmuch self-sacrifice is bad 
for both giver and receiver ; and what sacrifice would 
be overmuch I shall try to fix by a principle later on. 
Without wasting time to show that even to do 
altruistic work egoism must precede altruism, as for 
example that to do altruistic work that is effective a 
person must have health, and abounding vitality to 
do the best work ; that the most devoted philanthro- 
pist must first look out for himself and family, or, 
according to scripture, he is worse than an infidel ; 
that before Mr. Carnegie can build libraries and 
found universities he must acquire means and enor- 
mous means, let us consider what a vast part down- 
right selfishness plays in social service in ways that 
are less obvious. But first, what is meant by "social 
service?" In our subject the term is manifestly used 
in its most general signification of any service to the 
community by which, for example, mankind are fed, 
clothed, housed, instructed, amused or gratified, in- 
cluding all things which minister to man's material, 
spiritual, intellectual, wants or tastes, and thus would 
include the work of the tradesman, the author, the 
inventor, the musician, the artist, and pretty much 
every other calling and profession ; and a moment's 
thought will show that in all these the service in the 
main is selfishly rendered and selfishly accepted, that 
so far as the mental state of the parties is concerned, 
self-interest is the warp and woof of it all. Adam 

67 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

Smith's explanation of how great cities are fed is so 
good an illustration as to justify a statement of it. 
In cities practically nothing is produced that can be 
used for food, and the supply could not be cut off for 
a single day without much suffering, nor for many 
days without universal starvation. No specific 
arrangement to supply this want is made or even 
thought of ; but the provision dealer, thinking only 
of his own self-interest, furnishes what he believes 
his customers will buy, and the dealers all together 
supply the wants of the entire city. Here is a social 
service of prime importance furnished involuntarily 
and unconsciously ; and the self-interest is not a 
mere incident, but is the means of a better service 
than we can imagine as coming in any other way. 
Except that we are so familiar with the facts we 
should pronounce it inconceivable that a process so 
complicated as the feeding a great city, and which 
apparently is left entirely to chance, would never by 
some combination of circumstances break down ; but 
it never does break down. We go to sleep every 
night without a fear that our wants will not be met, 
because we know that the dealer's self-interest is 
working for our safety with all the certainty of the 
trade winds or the law of gravitation ; and we should 
not feel this certainty if our wants were to be met by 
politicians and public committees, or even by a com- 
mittee of philanthropists as eminent as Tolstoi, 
Maeterlinck, Ruskin, and Carlyle. Woe unto you Beth- 
saida and woe unto you Chorazin if you are to be fed by 
68 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

the philanthropist instead of the selfish man of trade ! 
Nay more, in case there be a scarcity of the world's 
food supply so that waste must be prevented to avoid 
famine before the next crop, the provision dealer, ac- 
tuated purely by self interest, raises his prices and per- 
haps cheats us by short weights, and thus saves us from 
the danger ; thereby rendering a social service that 
is indispensible by his very extortion and dishonesty. 
All this respecting the provision dealer is nowise 
exceptional, but extends to every branch of trade, to 
substantially every occupation, and in fact all the 
machinery whereby the world conducts its affairs. 
The man who clothes us ransacks the world, and he 
who ministers to our intellectual wants ransacks his 
brains, to satisfy our needs and our tastes, not for 
our sakes consciously or in any altruistic sense, but 
for the sake of tempting us to part with our money. 
I do not mean to imply that the author, the artist, 
the musician, do not have a joy in their work as 
such, or that the teacher and preacher are not actu- 
ated by high motives, or that the tradesman is not a 
very decent fellow ; but they must live, and in their 
business, and as between them and the public, the 
transaction on both sides is a mere financial one and 
egoistic. We know that money has no value in it- 
self but is a mere token, yet the whole world regard 
it as an end rather than a means. Why this delusion ? 
Simply because it will procure pretty much every- 
thing ; because what the world deems the blessings 
of life rest on a financial basis. The singer, for 

69 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

example, must needs sing for his own enjoyment, 
and must needs sing to the public for sake of the 
applause which is the breath of his nostrils, but still 
he refuses to sing until he has exacted the last possi- 
ble dollar ; and we buy tickets to hear him because we 
prefer the entertainment given rather than our money. 

If in connection with this matter of trade we 
inquire why it is that man is a trading animal, we are 
told that it is due to the principle of the division of 
labor, and thereupon hit upon another service to 
society that is rendered unconsciously, and is if pos- 
sible even more valuable and wonderful than the 
benefit from trade itself. This division of labor was 
not devised by any philosopher, taught by any phil- 
anthropist, ordered by any potentate, nor even recog- 
nized as a fact for thousands of years after its ex- 
istence, and arises purely from self-interest. Men take 
up some particular work or calling because they have 
a peculiar taste or peculiar aptitude for it, they thus 
get on in the world much the better, and vastly ben- 
efit the world by increased production. As the shoe- 
maker must pass his time in making shoes, not in ped- 
dling them, the trader becomes a necessity ; thus we 
have a system based on self-interest in root and branch, 
which yet produces benefits to society compared with 
which the schemes of philanthropy are feeble dreams. 
The dependence of the human family on one another 
produced thereby is, humanly speaking, more potent 
than all other causes combined in producing altruism. 

There is, however, something inspiring in the 
70 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

thought of apparent providential design whereby 
what we do for one purpose accomplishes another 
entirely different and much more important purpose. 
It is said that of a hive of bees very few of those that 
work so industriously to store up honey for the winter 
live to enjoy the fruit of their labors, but as they 
perish they are taken from the hive and dropped 
without eulogy or ceremony. What was the dead bee 
working for? We do not know enough of bee psy- 
chology to know v/hat he thought he was working 
for ; but v/hat was he really working for? He was not 
working for his children, for the working bee has no 
children ; he was not working under compulsion, for 
the working bee is master of the hive, killing the 
drones and even the queen at pleasure. He was 
really working for the bee community, merely getting 
his own living as he went along. Leaving human . 
drones out of account, the people who do the work 
of the world are exactly like bees in this ; we labor 
for all sorts of things and think we are working for 
ourselves and the family we identify with ourselves, 
and incidentally get a living as we go along, but the 
world gets all beyond that. A poet or a painter 
executes an immortal work and the world has it as 
soon as he does, and in a few short years wrests it 
from him entirely. Thus what Homer calls that 
''word of evil sound," death, is in its way a beneficent 
factor in economics, and, whatever it accomplishes 
in the next world, it is constantly tending to level 
things in this. The man whose genius builds up a 

71 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

great manufacturing business of what the world 
wants, or who by combining two railroad systems 
lessens the expense or increases the harmony of 
operation, actually creates value, and does a real social 
service, and appears to us to reap a great reward ; but 
a billionaire can only live, and can enjoy only so much, 
being straitly limited as Browning puts it in Cleon : 

"We struggle fain to enlarge 

Our bounded physical recipiency, 

Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life, 

Repair the waste of age and sickness: no. 

It skills not! life's inadequate to joy, 

As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take. 

They praise a fountain in my garden here 

Wherein a Naiad sends a water-bow 

Thin from her tube; she smiles to see it rise. 

W^hat if I told her, it is just a thread 

From that great river which the hills shut up. 

And mock her with my leave to take the same? 

The artificer has given her one small tube 

Past power to widen or exchange — what boon 

To know she might spout oceans if she could? 

She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread: 

And so a man can use but a man's joy 

While he sees God's." 

The homely New England adage that we cannot 

"pour water into a barrel faster than the bung-hole 

permits" is a less poetical simile : but the fact is 

patent that the man most successful in achievement, 

owing to our common limitations, gets little more 

selfish enjoyment out of life than his humbler 

neighbor ; and, no matter how much he struggles in 

selfishness, he speedily dies and principalities and 

powers divide his apparent assets which soon come 

72 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

back into the world's treasury, while the real value 
that he created the world keeps, and in fact acquired 
it as soon as he did. The world gets the sewing- 
machine and the telephone much more truly and 
permanently than the inventor or his so-called heirs. 

We thus see that the largest part of our work is ego- 
istic in its motive and altruistic in its effects, and that 
our lives and our mental state are not in harmony ; 
and there is a corresponding illusion as to certain 
work that we off-hand call altruistic. If a man gives 
his wealth for public objects because, as Mr. Carnegie 
puts it, he is ashamed to die rich, he is simply exer- 
cising a personal preference, and the real motive is 
selfish. The world praises this latter form of self- 
illusion, perhaps in the hope of getting more out of 
him ; but the fact remains that self-renunciation so 
called, if a person's happiness consists in it, is in its 
way as selfish as the opposite : and we thus see how 
inextricably nature has mixed her two children up. 
In fact egoism and altruism can never be disentangled 
in this earthly life. We cannot have an altruistic 
thought into which egoism does not enter, nor lead 
an active and upright life of so great egoism that it 
is not largely altruistic in its consequences. But 
selfishness is also prolific of evil, and it is important to 
find out if we can, as stated earlier in this paper, where 
selfishness ought to begin and where to leave off. 

It will help clear up some of our difficulties, to 
ascertain what should be the aim, /. e.^ ultimate aim, 
of social service. It seems to the essayist to be the 

73 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

production of the greatest possible aggregate of hap- 
piness in the world. This is not the same thing as 
the greatest good to the greatest number, which is a 
political invention appealing to the selfishness of the 
voter, and which is not the correct principle. To use 
an extreme illustration to test the principle, we should 
all agree that the destruction of billions of disease 
germs was justifiable to save the life of one human 
being ; and when the germs put in the plea of 
the greatest good to the greatest number it would 
promptly be disallowed, because we should believe 
that one human being could suffer more and enjoy 
more than they all. I do not, however, exclude the 
happiness of animals from the aggregate of happiness 
to be aimed at, except where it comes .into competi- 
tion with a being capable of greater or higher happi- 
ness ; but it clearly would be absurd generosity for a 
lady who has exquisite taste in music to give her 
tickets to a symphony concert to a servant-girl who 
would enjoy a brass band playing Yankee Doodle far 
more, and an afternoon out better than either. Now 
it is obvious that if the human race should work with 
good faith to make the world as happy as it ought to 
be, and as is actually attainable if the world would 
forego its transparent follies and its vnlful wrong- 
doing, the next century would usher in a state of things 
exceeding the wildest dream of the Utopian ; and while 
the world moves slowly there seems to be a gain as cen- 
turies pass, and that the greatest aggregate of mundane 
happiness is the goal to which the world is tending. 
74 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

Having determined the end in view, the next 
question is as to the means of accompHshment. At the 
outset it is well to say that there is no such thing as hap- 
piness, orblessedness, or well-being (for I do not quar- 
rel as to terms), floating about in the air, but it must in- 
here in some person. There is no such thing as general 
happiness apart from individual happiness ; or, in other 
words, society has attained all it can when the indi- 
viduals that compose it have attained all that they indi- 
vidually can. What then are the elements of individual 
happiness, and what are the methods of attainment ? 

Probably everyone will agree that the prime ele- 
ment in human happiness is health. Upon what 
does health depend ? No doubt to a considerable ex- 
tent on other people ; for example, v/hether somebody 
has stolen our umbrella, sold us impure milk, failed 
to be vaccinated, or not taken care of his plumbing. 
It also depends to a considerable extent upon inherited 
constitution, and care of us in infancy ; but giving the 
above all possible weight, it still remains that our health 
depends vastly more on ourselves than upon all other 
causes combined. Is there a person here whose con- 
science does not proclaim that health has been reck- 
lessly squandered, that the fault is mainly ours and the 
causes preventible ? The chief element in happiness, 
then, depends upon egoism mainly ; and reasonable 
regard for self in the one matter of health alone would 
almost make the world over new in a few generations. 

Next to health, and indeed they are essential to 
health itself, comes the being suitably fed, and 

75 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

housed, and clothed. It is true that man does not 
live by bread alone ; but it is necessary to have bread 
in order to live at all ; and mental and moral condi- 
tions depend so much upon physical conditions that 
the latter must be seen to first. Leaving out excep- 
tional cases, who can best and most effectually attend 
to these physical wants, others for us or we for our- 
selves? Surely we should look out for ourselves in 
these particulars if we can ; for it is a duty to be 
sufficiently egoistic so as not to be a drain on other 
people's altruism ; and egoism to that extent is the 
first indispensible step in altruism. And so we can 
go through the whole list of causes which will bring 
about the greatest aggregate of happiness, and we 
shall find that at every essential point individuals can 
best look out for their own happiness, and the hap- 
piness of other individuals requires that they should. 
Who can know as well as the individual his own in- 
dividual wants ? A world in which every one was so 
completely altruistic that he neglected his own wants 
and attended to the wants of others solely, would 
not only be a meddlesome world but an absurd world, 
and far from a happy world, since everybody's work 
would be done at the greatest possible disadvantage. 
The story of the garden of Eden embodies the great 
truth that our woes come mostly from our freedom ; 
but we should not have been made free unless 
freedom had been worth the awful price. Patent 
contrivances for reforming the world, and professional 
altruism generally, have an element of interference 

76 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

that is, to say the least, unfortunate. The phrase, 
''mind your own business" always means "don't 
meddle with my business," and implies that if people 
attend duly to their own egoistic duties they will 
have little leisure for meddlesome altruistic duties. 
It goes without saying that the professional altruist 
can only have the requisite leisure and means for his 
work through the previous egoistic work of himself 
or somebody else ; and people of inherited fortune 
are at great disadvantage because they cannot possi- 
bly enter into the lives or understand the feelings of 
their beneficiaries ; and nobody understands this 
better or regrets it more than those especially de- 
voted to charitable work. On the other hand the con- 
tributions of egoism to the sum of human happiness, 
including such as are rendered to society in general 
unconsciously, have none of these infirmities or 
assumption of superiority, but leave it to the man him- 
self to work out his own salvation ; and he is in general 
the only person who can work it out, and will be raised 
in the scale of being by working it out. The rule under- 
taken to be established, which is in substance that self- 
sacrifice is a duty when in the long run it will help swell 
the sum of happiness in the world, and egoism equally 
a duty when that increases the sum of the world's hap- 
piness is, no doubt, difificult of application to conduct, 
for we are none of us very wise, and some would be led 
astray in one direction by selfishness, and others would 
be misled by a morbid conscienciousness to unrea- 
sonable self-renunciation ; but difficulty of application 

77 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

does not lessen the correctness of the principl e, or justify 
suppression of the fact that selfishness may be rational, 
and when rational rests on a sound ethical foundation. 
But while selfishness cannot be altogether elimin- 
ated and ought not to be, it does not follow that the 
worser element in it cannot be mitigated, chasened, 
transmuted. Spencer's theory is that such will be 
the case, that in the same way that selfishness has 
come to include the family, so as time goes on the 
kinship of man to man will be recognized till selfish- 
ness includes the race, and, as it were, is transmuted 
into altruism. Spencer does not give the steps in 
his reasoning, and perhaps my attempt to supply the 
want may do him an injustice ; but I surmise the 
course of reasoning is somewhat as follows : In the 
early part of this paper we have seen how a custom 
gets established among wolves, without any moral 
sentiment whatever, simply because it is useful, and 
how among Homeric peoples such customs from 
their usefulness come to be standards of right and 
wrong, till they grow to have a moral significance ; 
and as soon as the moral sentiment is thus evolved 
the custom and the mental state are in harmony. 
Just so, Mr. Spencer would say, we all are perform- 
ing social service without realizing it in ways of 
which the provision dealer is a type, that is, the 
provision dealer performs both egoistic and altruistic 
work with an egoistic mind, but he will finally come 
to realize that he is doing a great service to society 
in addition to filling his pocket, and in the end will 
7S 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

have the altruistic mind also. It is obvious how 
much the aggregate of happiness in the world would 
be increased if the tradesman had this double satis- 
faction. Mr. Kidd, on the other hand, disbelieves 
Spencer's theory, and thinks altruism can only come 
from religion, admitting thereby that selfishness is in- 
evitable, and that the altruistic will always sacrifice their 
secret wishes to a sense of duty. Spencer has been much 
criticised for being too materialistic ; but to the mind 
of the essayist his theory is vastly the more spiritual 
of the two, though doubtless there is truth in both. 
The question naturally arises whether this necessity 
for selfishness is likely to disappear. Science answers 
in the negative ; that the struggle for existence is 
perennial ; for the world cannot grow, while the ten- 
dency is for population to increase beyond the means 
of supporting life. As Huxley puts it, the command 
to increase and multiply is the only scriptural com- 
mand that has been obeyed with uniformity ; and, as 
the example of bees, who only allow queens to have 
children, is not likely to be followed by our race, 
Darwin's law has come to stay. Mr. Kidd says in 
this connection what is also true, that we ought not 
to wish it otherwise, for upon the ceasing of compe- 
tition the race would deteriorate and decay. Herbert 
Spencer has hoped that with the ushering in of the 
era of industrialism wars would cease and industrial 
competition take its place ; but in fact industrialism* 

* Since this paper was written the world has seen the war 
between Russia and Japan, between Italy and Turkey, the 
Balkan wars, the South- African war, and the present German 
war — all industrial in the proper sense of that term. 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

is the most fruitful cause of wars. A starving popu- 
lation at industrial centers will demand a market, 
and wars will be resorted to to force that market ; 
and, indeed, the greatest war of recent times, our 
own war of the rebellion was an industrial war though 
of another sort. We cannot make the world over, 
but must adapt ourselves to it as best we may. 

It may be thought with some justice, that this 
paper has dealt with interestedness rather than dis- 
interestedness in social service. It is to be hoped 
that this is not due to any unusual depravity on the 
part of the writer ; but all truth cannot be embraced 
in one little paper, and in the limited field taken I 
am chiefly impressed with the fact that I have not 
sounded my note so loud as the facts demand. Take, 
for example, the great literature of the world ; much 
of it has been written directly for money, like 
Scott's novels ; some merely by way of business, like 
Shakespear's plays, which he looked upon merely as 
pot-boilers ; most, perhaps, for fame which has such 
attractions for gifted minds that, as Cicero tells us, 
even those who have written to prove its vanity 
always affix their own name to the manuscript, and 
self is at the bottom of all these motives ; and if it 
has all been done for delight in the work, if not self- 
ishness, the motive would be downright egoism, not 
altruism. What is true of great literature is equally 
true of art, science, and invention, /. e., substantially 
all the achievements that are the pride, triumph and 
uplift of the race have selfishness or at least egoism 
80 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

for their mother, and the world has them just the 
same and just the same benefit from them as if the 
motive had been different. If trees are known by 
their fruits, and it is by consequences that principles 
of ethics are properly tested, selfishness is not wrong 
but is the mighty force by which the best things get 
done ; but while that fact is sufficiently recognized 
in conduct, when people write or talk on social 
questions that truth is too much ignored. It has been 
contended, for example, that self-culture is wicked — 
that the specially gifted should throw their gifts aside 
and devote themselves instead to work for others ; 
whereas the poet, the artist, the singer, are charged 
with a message to the world which it is a sin not to 
deliver; and though few are geniuses, most of us 
have some special gift ; and if it be nothing more than 
studying Greek roots, provided the work be done so 
faithfully that it need not be done again, we are 
entitled to the commendation Browning gave to the 
Grammarian. The superior physical, mental, and 
moral organization that is inherited is the virtue of 
ancestors funded, and should be frankly taken advan- 
tage of, as being more truly ours than inherited 
money, and involving more responsibility in their use. 
It is no small tribute to altruism that it does so much to 
sweetenlife,butwhenitcomesto achievement, workfor 
self seems to be the order of nature ; and we only have 
to recall our difficulties at Christmast ime in selecting 
presents the friends we know best will really like and 
find really useful, to see that altruism in comparison 

8i 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

labors under a fatal disadvantage. The chances are that 
Mr. Carnegie did the world more good in acquiring his 
fortune than he will ever accomplish in giving it away. 
The fact ought not to be continually suppressed 
that society does not require that selfishness be 
eliminated, it only needs to be enlightened. The 
greatest obstacle in the way of the beneficiaries of 
altruism, the laboring poor, is that they have so little 
knowledge of what is for their own interest ; and 
until that lesson is learned the work of improving 
their condition is as fruitless as that of the fabled 
Danai'des in Hades pouring water into perforated 
vessels. It has been said that if the property of the 
world should be equally divided, great inequality 
would be restored inside of twenty-four hours. A 
manufacturer in Illinois one Saturday night by way 
of experiment paid his help $700 in marked bills, 
and the next Monday night ^300 of it had found its 
way back into his till coming from the saloons of the 
town alone ; and the president of the Trades Union 
Congress in England in an address to his followers 
told them that they had more to fear from drinking 
and gambling than from all the capitalists of the 
country. The father's distress over a wayward son 
is chiefly because the boy has not sufficient foresight 
to know his own true interest. How often we have 
heard of the morally weak that they are generous ; 
and of a person of the opposite type that he is too 
mean to indulge in vices ; but it is not to be forgotten 
82 



IN SOCIAL SERVICE 

that the prodigal son not only was reckless of his own 
interest, but was much more dangerous to society 
than his frugal brother. There is a certain foresight 
that goes with selfishness even when it is excessive 
that usually makes a man industrious, thrifty, law- 
abiding, measurably honest, and a substantial citizen. 
Even the grasping man is a better citizen than the 
shiftless man, and the miser better than the spend- 
thrift. Mr. Peabody in his book, Christ and the 
Social Qiiestio7i, says that Christ did not deal much 
with social issues but aimed at individual reform ; 
and, in fact, the social issues that are most pressing 
would be at once happily settled by individual 
reform. Preaching individual reform is not popular, 
and spouters must be expected to tell the miserable 
that their unhappy conditions are due to somebody 
else, and in particular somebody who is getting on well 
in the world, nor can sound doctrine be expected from 
newspapers that sell for a cent to a constituency that 
have not two cents to pay ; but people of brains ought 
not to be stampeded by a baseless hue and cry. This in- 
dividual reform must first of all be a reform in habits, 
and a selfishness large enough and potent enough to 
control those habits is the first indispensible requisite ; 
and those habits which save the individual are at the 
same time the elemental civic virtues. With such re- 
form altruism, in dealing with what is commonly known 
as the social problem, is scarcely needed, and without 
it altruistic work will never be more than a makeshift. 

S3 



HERBERT SPENCER'S 

RECONCILIATION 

OF 

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 



M 



HERBERT SPENCER'S 

RECONCILIATION 

OF 

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 



R. HERBERT SPENCER at the beginning of 
his system of philosophy undertakes to fix the 
limits of human knowledge. He tells us that the 
nature of the human mind is such that we may know 
the relative, the finite, the phenomenal, but not the 
absolute, the infinite, or the real ; that in fact all reality 
is to man forever inscrutable, and that there is nothing 
of which we know or can know the ultimate nature. 
He, however, adduces arguments which do not admit of 
a brief statement, to prove that while we know nothing 
of the nature of realities, we have the high warrant of 
consciousness and common sense that reality exists — 
that there is an "actuality lying behind appearances" — 
in that our belief in such actuality is necessary and 
indestructible. Thus, as to the infinite, the absolute, 
the unconditioned, while we cannot form any concep- 
tion what it is, we are compelled to believe that it is. 
In the same connection, and perhaps with a view 



Note. This paper was read before the Brookline 
Thursday Club, April 8, 1897, when Mr. Spencer was living. 

S7 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 

to illustrate the truth which he was endeavoring to 
inculcate, Mr. Spencer attempts to reconcile science 
and religion by showing that the field of their con- 
troversy lies wholly outside the limits wherein the 
human mind is competent to make any assertion. 
He shows that all the ultimate ideas both of science 
and religion are not only incomprehensible but un- 
thinkable ; that theories to account for the existence of 
the world or as to the nature of the power displayed in 
the universe, not only cannot be verified by science, but 
cannot even be realized in consciousness ; and argues 
that concerning the whole subject matter in controversy 
the only rational view is that of the agnostic. Towards 
this conclusion, he tells us, science and religion have 
been tending from the first ; science in its progress ever 
grouping relations of phenomena under laws more and 
more general and abstract, and therefore more incon- 
ceivable or unthinkable, and ever forcing religion to a- 
bandon the "concrete and conceivable agencies alleged 
as the causes of things," and to adopt others less con- 
crete and conceivable ; and when both come to a recog- 
nition of the fact that the cause or reality behind phe- 
nomena is wholly inscrutable they will be reconciled. 
His argument is unnecessarily confusing owing to 
the fact that two threads of thought run through it that 
need to be disentangled. By science and religion he at 
times means scientific men and religious men, or in 
other words, science and religion as they have appeared 
historically ; and in this case the controversy between 
them is the historic controversy. At other times he 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

uses the words science and religion in a more abstract 
sense ; and in the latter case the question of antag- 
onism is a question of definition. Accordingly what in 
one place he calls religion, meaning historical religion, 
he elsewhere in dealing with the definition terms ir- 
religion. Later, I shall call attention to this point again. 
Mr. Spencer enforces his conclusion in a variety of 
ways all of which reach the same result. I will state 
briefly his line of thought when dealing with the 
question from the abstract side. He tells us that we 
find religion and science coexisting in the same uni- 
verse and in the same mind ; that whether we have 
been created, or we with our beliefs and habits of mind 
are the products of evolution, it is equally unreasonable 
to suppose that religion and science are fundamentally 
inharmonious. In the one case both are creations of 
the same god ; in the other both are caused by the 
same environment. Being satisfied that they must be 
harmonious, he undertakes by a wide generalization 
to go back to something in which both agree. That 
something he asserts to be the perception of the 
relativity of human knowledge, or in other words, the 
recognition of the fact that to us the world and its 
cause is an impenetrable mystery. Religion and 
science, he says, survey this same mystery from oppo- 
site points of view, science seeing only the finite, 
relative, and phenomenal side, with a tendency, as it 
generalizes more widely, towards the ultimate and 
inscrutable cause, while religion looks towards the 
inscrutable cause itself, with a consciousness that its 



HERBERT SPENCER 

nature is inscrutable and that its reality is all that can 
be asserted. Thus the two are fundamentally harmo- 
nious; and the conflict between them he asserts to 
have arisen from their imperfections \ religion assert- 
ing a mystery, and yet claiming that the nature of 
this mystery is wholly or in part understood; and 
science asserting certain metaphysical entities to be 
causes, as if it understood the nature of the real cause, 
thus falling into the same error as religion. By "met- 
aphysical entities" he refers to the use of such words 
as "nature," "vital principle," "electricity," "chemical 
affinity," and the like, as if they were real and under- 
stood causes. Thus science and religion, he says, have 
had and can have no necessary conflict, and the actual 
conflict has been between an unscientific science and 
an irreligious religion on the precise issue wherein the 
one was irreligious and the other unscientific, namely, 
as to the nature of the ultim.ate cause, concerning which 
neither could rightfully make any assertion whatever. 
Many of the views set forth above will, I think, gen- 
erally be admitted. It is inconceivable that there can 
be a real necessary conflict between religion and sci- 
ence ; and thinkers have known, at least since the time 
of Socrates, that in a certain sense they knew nothing ; 
yet for some reason this reconciliation, which has been 
before the world for almost a generation, and been 
printed in so many editions that it evidently has not 
lost the confidence of its author, has not met with any 
general acceptance. The standing of the author and the 
importance of the subject justify careful scrutiny of the 
go 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

propositions embodied in the argument, to ascertain 
if possible why the world has not deemed it satisfactory. 

The several propositions would seem to be as fol- 
lows : First, that there has been a historic conflict 
between religion and science ; Second, that the sub- 
ject-matter of this conflict has been as to the nature 
of the ultimate cause of things ; Third, that the nature 
of the ultimate cause is wholly inscrutable — it not 
only cannot be known, but cannot even be thought 
or imagined ; Fourth, that when this third propo- 
sition is admitted by the parties to the controversy, 
the reconciliation is complete. The first of these 
propositions is presupposed by the inquiry, and the 
other three we will examine in succession. 

Is it true that the vital point in the contest has 
been as to the nature of the original cause? To the 
validity of Mr. Spencer's argument an affirmative 
answer is indispensable, for otherwise his several 
propositions fail to connect. Facts will not support 
his contention. It may aid a correct ansv/er to 
remember that the growth of science necessitates 
constant differences in the views of scientific men 
themselves. Growth in sciences means change of 
views ; and the man who makes a discovery changes 
first, and for a time his views are in conflict with the 
views of other men. Perhaps the new view is not 
generally adopted until a generation has passed away, 
as has so many times been said of Harvey's discovery 
of the circulation of the blood ; and many truly scien- 
tific men of Mr. Darwin's age died without accepting 

91 



HERBERT SPENCER 

his theory, or the general theory of evolution. Again, 
as every theory is only proximately correct, by the 
time it has become generally established it is liable 
to be greatly modified in certain leading minds, if 
not altogether superceded, by a newer and better 
theory based on a wider induction. Thus it may be 
said that every generation differs materially from all 
other generations in its scientific opinions ; but as two 
or more generations coexist, these different opinions 
lead to a necessary conflict between w^hat I will call Ad- 
vanced Science and Belated Science ; and this conflict 
must be perennial — never ceasing till progress ceases. 
A critical examination into the nature of the so- 
called conflict between science and religion will show 
that most of it has been a difference between old and 
new science, and that the questions controverted 
have been scientific questions and not religious ques- 
tions. The historic contest for many centuries has 
turned on the science, or supposed science, of the 
Bible, and not upon its religion. Dr. Draper's and 
Prof. White's histories of this conflict show^ that the 
nature of the original cause has played no direct part 
in it ; for science has never assumed to deny the truth 
either of theism or atheism, and it never can.* The 
historic disputes have been, whether the earth is flat 
or globular ; whether or not the earth is the center of 
the universe and motionless ; whether it was created 



* Science, in fact, did not debate the question whether 
theism was or was not true, but maintained that certain ar- 
guments and evidence on which the theist relied were invalid, 

92 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

in six days of twenty-four hours each ; whether man 
was created highly civilized ; whether the pillar of salt 
into which Lot's wife was turned can be seen today ; 
whether there has ever been a universal deluge ; 
whether disease and more particularly insanity is due 
to possession by evil spirits and the true remedy ex- 
orcism ; and more recently whether the present form 
of things is due to distinct creative acts, or a process 
of evolution. In these and many similar matters re- 
ligion has adhered longer than it should to a science 
that is much belated. At the recent installation a 
belated brother felt called upon to enter a public 
protest because the new Archbishop of Canterbury 
had accepted the theory of evolution. 

As to scientific questions like the above, religion 
has an unfortunate record which I do not wish to 
extenuate. It has been intolerant, disingenuous, and 
stupid. Science like other things has made its ad- 
vance through theories, and theories are liable to be 
wrong ; but religion has often shut its eyes to facts 
after the evidence supporting them has become over- 
whelming. Still, justice should be done ; and the 
authors above named, and writers on the subject 
generally, have given the matter a wTong coloring. 
The implication is made that religion for its own pur- 
poses invented the erroneous view and that science 
always maintained the correct view, and that when the 
several controversies arose the great body of scientific 
men were agreed ; whereas in fact, particularly in the 
early stages of all these conflicts, the world in general 

93 



HERBERT SPENCER 

maintained the old theory against a very few. There 
is nothing in the Veda, in Homer, or in Genesis to 
indicate that their ancient authors did not set forth 
the accepted science of their day. Apparently phil- 
osophy, religion, and science were then in accord ; 
and when, for example, the theory was first broached 
that the diurnal motion of the heavens and the annual 
motion of the sun were only apparent, and that it was 
in fact the earth that moved in both cases, it was 
contrary to common sense. Among the Greeks, 
Pythagoras is credited with being the first to main- 
tain the latter theory ; but it was a theory merely and 
was denied by their great astronomer, Hipparchus ; 
and no less men than Aristotle, and in more modern 
times. Bacon, put themselves on record against it ; 
and Copernicus advanced it as probable, and a sim- 
ple explanation of phenomena, rather than as a fa6t. 
Galileo after the discovery of the telescope and the 
satellites of Jupiter obtained additional evidence, but 
is said to have been deterred for a long time from 
advancing his theory because it excited so much ridi- 
cule. It was not the church simply but the world in gen- 
eral and the great body of scientific men that opposed 
Galileo ; and in his so-called persecution the church 
was the organized body through which the whole 
world a6led. I say "so-called" because the accounts 
of his persecution have been full of exaggeration. 
As this Copernican theory has played so large a part 
in accounts of the confii6l, I call attention again to the 
small element in it of a dispute about the nature of 
94- 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

the original cause, and that the question was purely 
scientific. It is shown later why the fear of atheism 
in the back-ground of the controversy, which un- 
doubtedly accounts largely for the attitude of the 
church, does not help Mr. Spencer's contention. 

The only other historic contest of importance oc- 
curred in Greece about 400 to 600 b. c, and grew 
out of scientific advances made by Thales, Anaxi- 
menes, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and others. Here 
again there was in Homer and Hesiod in effe6l an- 
other Bible. These philosophers were all classified 
by Aristotle as believing in material causes. Their 
problem was to determine of the four assumed ele- 
ments, earth, air, fire, and water, which was the 
prime element. Thales taught that it was water; 
Anaximenes, air; Heraclitus, fire. These elements 
were deemed convertible, one into the other. If fire 
was changed to air, air would be the form in which 
air was living and fire dead ; and if air became water, 
water was the form in which air was dead ; and if 
water became earth, then earth was the dead form of 
water. These men rebelled against the Homeric 
conception of the gods ; but were free-thinkers and 
pantheists rather than atheists. Still, it is generally 
claimed that they believed material cause the original 
cause ; and that gods as well as men are effe6ls of 
matter. It will be observed that the materialist has 
the phenomena of life and mind to account for ; and 
does account for them as forms of matter. If 
psychology is a branch of physics, it is none the less 

95 



HERBERT SPENCER 

science of mind ; and if matter can account for 
human beings, some more favorable combination 
might make superhuman beings. Thus the material- 
ist may be and often has been a theist, only his 
deity is not the sole prime cause. 

So these ancient thinkers may be deemed positive 
materialists in their theory of original causation. 
The gods of Homer, on the other hand, were not 
original causes, but were worshipped rather as being 
the immediate causers of events which pertained to 
the affairs of men. In the Clouds of Aristophanes, 
Socrates is represented as claiming that it is the 
clouds that rain and not Zeus ; and in that sense the 
ancient gods were deemed original causes by the 
common people, but only in the same way that human 
beings, if free agents, are the original cause of some 
things. The Homeric gods were distin(5lly descend- 
ants of more ancient deities, and not original causes 
in the sense Mr. Spencer's argument demands. But 
construing this confiift in Greece as favorable to Mr. 
Spencer's contention as possible, it would be a con- 
test between theism and atheism ; and that, as I have 
said before, and will appear later, would not suit his 
argument at all. Neither of the gentlemen who have 
written a history of the confli6l, nor Mr. Spencer, 
have alluded to the confli6l in Greece, perhaps from 
the obscurity that hangs over it. 

Mr. Spencer's claim that science has gone astray 
in the use of such words as "nature," "chemical 
affinity," "ele6tricity," and the like, as if they were 
g6 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

true original causes, and that this has occasioned to 
some extent the contest in question, will hardly bear 
examination. Was any one here ever taught that 
those terms were anything else than makeshifts in 
language — mere covers for ignorance — invented for 
pra6tical use only ? The story is told of the late 
Prof. Lovering that he was once asked by a lady, 
"What is electricity, anyhow?" He responded, "We 
believe it to be the same thing as lightning ; but if 
you go on to ask what that is, I shall have to tell you 
to go to thunder." Still we must resort to such 
words, or stop thinking. If we should try to say that 
heat, light, and ele6tricity, are all different forms of 
the same force, and expressed no more than we fully 
understand, the sentence would become, "unknown, 
unknown, and unknown, are all different forms of the 
same unknown." We could not get on very fast with 
such a language ; and I have never understood that 
religion desired to hamper us in that way. The only 
justification for Mr. Spencer's claim I think is this, 
that religion on being taunted with the charge that it 
used terms it did not understand, has retorted that 
science also used terms it did not understand ; but it 
may be said with safety that it has never entered into 
confli6l with science on the subje6l, and that science 
has never been ready to engage in a contest so inde- 
fensible. It is evident that other things besides 
religion have large dealings with the transcendental. 
So when we come to Mr. Spencer's third point, w^e 
perceive the force of the general proposition that we 

97 



HERBERT SPENCER 

cannot know the nature of the ultimate cause. But 
neither do we know in its essence the nature of a 
stone, nor our own nature ; yet we beHeve, and 
have the san6lion of science itself for believing, that 
we know something real of ourselves and of the ex- 
ternal world. We cannot account for the existence of 
the world on any course of demonstrative reasoning. 
As he says, we cannot even imagine matter created out 
of nothing. It is true that many modern physicists 
believe that matter is merely a form of force ; and 
Bishop Berkeley theorized that it was an illusion only 
existing in its phenomena, and that its phenomena are 
effects on our minds caused by the deity : but these 
suppositions do not make the problem any more com- 
prehensible. Again, the existence of an uncaused 
cause,* whether personal or material, is wholly un- 
thinkable ; but it does not follow because both suppo- 
sitions have elements that are incomprehensible that 
the human mind must or ought to rest there. It will 
appear later that we are not quite helpless in taking 
other steps. 

Before going further it should be stated that while 
all philosophies agree that our knowledge is mainly 
relative, many thinkers of repute believe that the 
do6trine as held by Mr. Spencer is carried too far. 

* Mr. Spencer concedes at the outset that reality exists 
and, if so, reason asserts that there never was a time when 
some reality did not exist, and therefore there must have 
been an uncaused cause. It is true that such a proposition 
"cannot be realized in consciousness," nor imagined, but the 
belief is as "indestructible" as the belief that actuality exists. 

98 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

The question turns largely upon whether all our ideas 
come through the five senses, or experience, for such 
ideas must have sense limitations ; but many hold 
that in addition we have innate ideas, or the 
equivalent of innate ideas, and also have faculties to 
apprehend truths that are not relative. Some think, 
for example, that we know mathematical truths not 
relatively but as they are ; — that, for instance, the 
quantitative ratio between numbers, as between one 
and two, is a reality wholly outside the human mind. 
We have never known in experience a perfe6t circle, 
or other figure required by the demonstrations of ge- 
ometry ; and in many ways we conceive of perfection, 
though experience has only shown us imperfe6lion. 
Again, such ideas as are implied in the word 
"infinite" could not come from experience; and 
when the positivist says that by "infinite" we really 
mean "indefinite" — that the infinite is beyond human 
thought — his assertion carries with it its own refuta- 
tion; for the inquiry is at once suggested how he 
knows it is beyond human thought unless he gives it 
a meaning beyond experience himself. Kant taught 
that some of our ideas, such as space and time, for 
example, are due to the structure of the understand- 
ing ; but while his categories imply relativity they are 
a two-edged sword, and the theist may claim that 
space and time are realities, and the mind-stru6lure 
purposely made to tell us such necessary truths. The 
relativity phase of Mr. Spencer's reconcihation is too 
vast and intricate to be more than alluded to here, 

99 



HERBERT SPENCER 

particularly as it is not relied on in this paper ; but 
the essayist deemed it worth noting that to many 
minds the do6lrine of relativity has limitations not 
recognized by Mr. Spencer.* 

Of Mr. Spencer's four propositions, the first — that 
there has been a historic confli6t between religion 
and science — is conceded. His second proposition 
— that that confii6l has been as to the nature of the 
original cause — is found to be true only to a limited 
extent, if at all. The third proposition — that the 
nature of the original cause is wholly unknowable — 
is, to say the least, debatable ; but the question now 
arises whether if all three points are conceded to the 
fullest extent Mr. Spencer has effe6led a real recon- 
ciliation. This involves the question of a corre6t 
definition of rehgion ; and it is here, I think, that 
Mr. Spencer's position is especially weak. 

It is obvious that science and religion approach a 
question of this kind from very different standpoints. 
Science seeks to ascertain the order of the universe 
as a fa6l, to classify phenomena, to learn proximate 
causes, and has nothing whatever to do with the 
ultimate cause. Science for ages has disclaimed all 
attempt to ascertain the original cause as not being 



* Certain "actualities" are always attended by certain 
phenomena; and the late Francis E. Abbot contended that 
relations had an actual existence in the external world inde- 
pendent of the human mind, and that all progress of science 
was upon the assumption that its classifications were reali- 
ties. Thus the relative would to some extent be real, — a 
thought that cuts deep into the extreme doctrine of relativity. 

100 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

within its scope. A scientific man may be a theist or 
an atheist, that is, he may believe the ultimate cause 
to be personal or material, or he may be an agnostic 
leaving the whole question undecided, and his scien- 
tific views be precisely the same. Science as science 
may fairly be said to be agnostic, and can accept 
Mr. Spencer's reconciliation with equanimity and 
with its life and vigor unimpaired. Is the same true 
of religion ? It is said of the ancient Romans that they 
made a solitude and called it peace ; and it would be 
equally a misnomer to call that process a reconcilia- 
tion which leaves one of the parties dead. To ascer- 
tain the effe6t of this reconciliation on religion, we 
must try to find out what religion really is ; and first 
I will give Mr. Spencer's definition, premising, how- 
ever, that on this point he is vague and unsatisfa6lory. 
In the earlier editions of his First Principles, he 
defines religion as follows : 

"Leaving out the accompanying moral code, which is in 
all cases a supplementary growth, religion may be defined 
as an a priori theory of the universe." 

In later editions the last clause has been changed 
so as to read, "A religious creed is definable as a 
theory of original causation." He states in the preface 
that the change was made "to prevent misconcep- 
tions ;" but he does not tell us what misconceptions 
he seeks to avoid. He still means, as the context 
shows, that any a priori theory as to the nature of 
the original cause is religion. It follows that atheism 
would be religion since it necessarily involves an 

lOl 



HERBERT SPENCER 

a priori theory that so-called material causes are the 
ultimate causes behind phenomena ; and Mr. Spencer 
logically faces the issue and declares that it is 
religion — at the same time stating that it "is com- 
monly regarded as the negation of all religion," Since 
common usage is decisive as to the meaning of words, 
it is thus evident at the outset that the religion which 
Mr. Spencer reconciles with science is not what the 
world calls religion, nor the religion with which 
science has been in conflidl. I will give the whole 
passage as amended to insure justice to Mr. Spencer : 

"Leaving out the accompanying moral code, which is in 
all cases a supplementary growth, a religious creed is defin- 
able as a theory of original causation. By the lowest savages 
the genesis of things is not inquired about: anomalous 
appearances alone raise the question of agency. But be it in 
the primitive Ghost-theory which assumes a human person- 
ality behind each unusual phenomenon; be it in Polytheism, 
in which these personalities are partially generalized; be it in 
Monotheism, in which they are wholly generalized; or be it 
in Pantheism, in which the generalized personality becomes 
one with the phenomena; we equally find an hypothesis 
which is supposed to render the Universe comprehensible. 
Nay, even that which is commonly regarded as the negation 
of all religion — even positive Atheism, comes within the 
definition ; for it, too, in asserting the self-existence of Space, 
Matter, and Motion, which it regards as adequate causes of 
every appearance, propounds an a priori theory from which 
it holds the facts to be deducible. Now every theory tacitly 
asserts two things; firstly, that there is something to be 
explained; secondly, that such and such is the explanation. 
Hence, however widely different speculators may disagree in 
the solution they give of the same problem; yet by 
implication they agree that there is a problem to be solved. 
Here there is an element which all creeds have in common. 

102 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

Religions diametrically opposed in their overt dogmas, are 
yet perfectly at one in the tacit conviction that the existence 
of the world with all it contains and all which surrounds it, 
is a mystery ever pressing for interpretation. On this 
point, if on no other, there is entire unanimity." 

Mr. Spencer goes on to say that this is further 
shown to be the vital element in all religions because 
it not only survives every change, but deepens the 
more highly a religion is developed ; and implies that 
in a perfe6lly developed religion it will be the funda- 
mental article of its faith that the mystery passes 
human comprehension. 

Before pursuing further definitions of religion, let 
us pause a moment to consider Mr. Spencer's 
position as to atheism. It is not a joke, though it 
doubtless gratified his sense of humor to represent 
the contest between theism and atheism as a case of 
odium theologicum, or contest between two religions ; 
nor is it a mere piece of diplomacy in his role of a 
peacemaker. It is absolutely forced by his main 
position of the unknowableness of the original cause ; 
for agnosticism is as inconsistent with atheism as 
with theism. It is also evident that not even that 
unknowableness can reconcile theism and atheism ; 
for that would be reconciling contradi6lions, which 
of course is impossible. A theist and an atheist 
might be reconciled by acceptance of the do6lrine 
that neither had any warrant for his belief ; but the 
one would no longer be a theist, nor the other an 
atheist. In other words, such a "reconciliation" 
would be a complete misnomer, since it would leave 

JOS 



HERBERT SPENCER 

both theism and atheism dead upon the field. The 
same would be true if one of the combatants perished 
in the process, as would be the case with religion 
under the definition first above given ; for an a priori 
theory of the universe, or of original causation, would 
become not reconciled but annihilated when changed 
to no theory. Just as an agreement to disagree is a 
confirmed disagreement on the main question, so a 
theory that no theory is possible is an end of theory 
on the main question. 

What, then, is Mr. Spencer's idea of religion? It 
is, and to fit his argument must be, simply an ap- 
prehension of the mystery of the universe and the 
giving up of that mystery as insoluble. It must not 
have either creed, belief, feeling, or even theory. If 
such a definition be accepted, a reconciliation has 
indeed been effe6led ; for, as we have seen, science 
is incidentally agnostic, and religion would by its 
definition become agnosticism itself. Mr. Spencer 
has simply reconciled incidental agnosticism to es- 
sential agnosticism by definition ; and the question 
is whether such a definition ought to be accepted. 

In trying to make a generalization wide enough 
for his purpose I think Mr. Spencer went back 
beyond the point where religion begins. The general 
do6lrine of the relativity of human knowledge is 
absolutely universal in its application and anterior to 
every phase of thought. In other words, his recon- 
cilement would reconcile geology and botany as 
much as it reconciles science and religion. The 
104 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

sense of mystery is the property of all mankind. We 
find ourselves in a world of phenomena of which we 
see neither beginning nor end. This mystery we can 
but try to solve. The early man appears without 
exception to have believed that the cause behind 
this world was personal. There is not a suggestion 
of atheism in Homer, nor in the ancient parts of the 
Veda, or the Bible. Men have reasoned upon this 
subje6t through analogies drawn from experience 
and observation. 

To take a simple illustration, we will imagine a 
stone thrown by a boy into the air. Its speed up- 
ward gradually lessens and finally ceases altogether, 
and it descends to the earth describing a curve 
known as a parabola according to known laws of 
dynamics where two forces a6t simultaneously on a 
moving body. One of these forces we call personal 
and the other material because they seem so to us 
and we are thus able to distinguish them ; yet we 
know all the time that both forces involve something 
which is incomprehensible. We cannot understand 
how the personal will of the boy has a6ted on his 
muscular system, nor how his muscle has availed to 
raise the stone, nor how the earth has been able to 
draw it back again ; yet in common language we do 
not hesitate to say that the boy threw the stone into 
the air and that gravitation brought it back to earth. 
We are obliged to resort to such makeshifts in lan- 
guage in order to think at all. The fa6t that the 
a6lion described is inconceivable clearly does not 

105 



HERBERT SPENCER 

make it impossible, for it actually takes place. What 
is unknowable is not therefore untrue. Now the 
phenomena of the universe are presented to us as if 
we saw only the stone in the air, but not the boy who 
threw it, or the earth that attra6ls it ; and we can but 
look to analogy for explanation. Accordingly when 
we try to account for the existence of the world, 
while it is admitted that it is wholly inconceivable to 
us that it could be created out of nothing, and 
equally inconceivable that it should have existed 
from eternity without a cause, still it does exist ; and 
I think Mr. Spencer wrong in assuming that the 
hum.an mind can rest with mere apprehension of a 
mystery while according to those processes of reason- 
ing upon which all knowledge depends we feel cer- 
tain that one or the other of those explanations must 
be the true solution. Thus we are forced to attribute 
the world to a personal or a material cause, and no 
other supposition is open to us. Just so, it is absolutely 
necessary, and I believe perfectly legitimate, to say 
that the power in the universe, however incomprehen- 
sible it may be, is either personal or impersonal ; and 
v/e become theists or atheists according to which 
theory we adopt. If religion involves this step, Mr. 
Spencer's reconciliation has failed ; and I think 
religion does involve this and another step also. 

What then is religion? The definitions that have 

been given would fill volumes, and I will not attempt 

a complete definition ; but will say first, that I do not 

think it a theory of the universe, but that it depends 

io6 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

upon one of the above theories of the universe ; and 
second, that the chief element in it is a recognition 
of a supreme power therein and a wish and purpose 
to be and live in due and proper relations with that 
power. This generalization would include those 
religions which are materialistic ; for according to 
the world's definitions there are such. Buddhism, 
which is the religion of more than half mankind, is 
materialistic ; for though, as Mr. Huxley says, "they 
recognized gods many and lords many," such beings 
were supposed to be the products of the cosmic 
process and not its cause, and were the souls of men 
reaping the rewards of good deeds, and liable to be 
born anew as animals or plants. The Buddhist reli- 
gion is a rule of life and condu6l, in the main highly 
moral, which it is hoped will lead to Nirvana, or 
complete absorption into the life of the universe, 
that is to say, to annihilation ; for the Buddhist is a 
pessimist, and looks upon conscious existence as an 
evil. So the Stoics were materialists. It is true they 
believed in 2,pnemna or spirit pervading the universe ; 
but that spirit was deemed the raw material out of 
which conscious existence was made rather than as 
having a conscious existence of its own. Marcus 
Aurelius was not quite consistent, and seems at times 
to hold to theism in the modern sense ; and probably 
there was great variety of creed among the Stoics; 
but they all agreed upon a rule of life and condu(5l 
that men should live "according to nature." With 
persistent optimism they looked upon nature as 

707 



HERBERT SPENCER 

wholly good ; and thus both they and the Buddhists 
ordered their life in recognition of the supreme 
povver of the universe as they conceived it. 

The theist, on the other hand, feels that man is 
the wonder of the universe, and finds in himself 
something to which the material world does not 
respond. He cannot think it reasonable to believe 
that he would have been what he is if he be simply a 
by-produ6t of unintelligent cosmic forces. He 
admits that the power manifested in the universe is 
inscrutable, but still conceives it as personal in such a 
sense that he can hold some personal relation to and 
with it. If it be personal and intelligent it may take 
cognizance of his good and evil condu6l ; and the 
two great passions of hope and fear, combined with 
a persistent belief that we are free and accountable 
for our a6ls, lead more dire6lly than atheistic reli- 
gions to a desire to get into due relations with that 
power. Among the reasons which have lent so 
great vitality to the Christian religion are the two 
fa6ls that in Genesis man is not only represented as 
created by God but created in God's image ; and 
that Christ is a human representation of God ; thus 
making easy the conception of God as not purely an 
absolute being but as having one aspe6l that is 
relative and thus capable of holding diredl personal 
relations with man. On the other hand, the imbe- 
cility of man's understanding, on which Mr. Spencer 
builds, leads to this result that neither the theist nor 
the atheist can prove his case by anything like 
io8 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

demonstrative evidence ; nor can either disprove the 
case of the other. The theist beUeves in an uncaused 
God with eternal attributes ; the atheist or materialist 
in uncaused matter with eternal properties. Both 
propositions are unthinkable ; but being contradic- 
tions, one must be true ; and if neither admits of a 
provable affirmation it is equally clear that neither 
admits of a provable denial. While I do not believe 
in the atheistic interpretation of the universe, it has 
a certain intelligibility ; but I can see no sufficient 
basis for agnosticism* as a final resting-place for an 
intelligent mind, and believe it is one of the fads of 
the day, and will not be permanent. 

Theism and materialism, on the other hand, repre- 
sent two ways of looking at the universe that have a 
quasi intelligibility, and so far as can be foreseen are 
permanent. Between them the contest is irreconcila- 
ble ; and so far as the contest of religion with science 
is not already explained, so far as religion has had 
its purely religious feelings involved in the contro- 
versy, it has been due to the theists' fear of atheism. 
"This do6lrine is atheistic ! " has always been the 
cry. It is now plain why Mr. Spencer has always 
ignored this view of the case, and indeed could not 
avail himself of it to prove that the contest had really 
been as to the nature of the original cause, because 
on his theory and his basis of reconciliation he was 



* I think Dante would hold the agnostic as peculiarly 
fitted for the Ante-Hell described in the first of these essays. 

log 



HERBERT SPENCER 

compelled to pronounce atheism a religion, and to 
assume that this phase of the confii6l was a difference, 
not between science and religion, but between two 
religions. In passing, it is perhaps worth noticing 
that science has never had any historic contest with 
atheistic religions. This, I think, does not imply that 
science is atheistic, but grows partly out of the fa6l 
that it is the theistic religions that have Bibles, and 
partly because such religions are rooted more deeply 
in the personal feelings of believers. The atheist 
could not believe in an inspired book, or other form 
of inspiration or revelation ; and thus the main cause 
of the a6lual contention does not exist. The only 
sense in which science is atheistic is that it deals ex- 
clusively with causes that appear to be material, and 
hence is in danger of assuming that there are no others. 
To recapitulate, Mr. Spencer's religion is a sense 
of the mysterious power of the universe and must be 
felt by every thinking person ; and every such person 
is a religious person provided he stops thinking at 
that point, for otherwise he straightway becomes 
irreligious. If a single step in thought beyond this 
is necessary in order to constitute religion, then his 
reconciliation does not reconcile, but kills. Accord- 
ing to the essayist's view of religion there must suc- 
ceed (to follow Mr. Spencer's hne of thought), a 
theory of the universe either theistic or atheistic, 
that is a positive belief as to the nature of the 
supreme power manifested therein. Even this is not 
religion but only a foundation for religion ; but 
no 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

religion, as has been said, involves a further step, 
namely, the desire and purpose after the nature of 
the power is determined to be and live in due and 
proper relations to it. The essayist would define a 
religious creed as being a system of belief making 
such relations possible ; religious worship as being a 
method of effecting such relations ; and a religious 
life as being a system of condu6t designed to be con- 
formable to such relations. Manifestly Mr. Spencer's 
reconciliation has no application to religion so 
defined. In my opinion Mr. Spencer under the 
necessities of his argument has adopted a definition 
which avoids slaying religion only by forbidding not 
simply its birth but its conception. 

As to Mr. Spencer's assumption that because a 
thing is inconceivable, we therefore cannot rationally 
have any belief about it, I find that in maintaining 
the contrary I have on my side the weighty authority 
of Sir WiUiam Hamilton, who belonged to the gen- 
eration before Mr. Spencer. His theory was that 
everything that is thiiikable lies between two exti'ejues 
which are contradifiory of each other, which cannot 
both be true but of which as mutual contradiBoi'ies 
one must. For example, we form a conception of 
space ; and we cannot conceive it as either bounded 
or unbounded, but it must be one or the other ; and 
in general he asserts that of two inconceivabilities 
that are mutually exclusive, we are at liberty so far as 
valid reasoning is concerned, to argue in favor of 
either. The very imbecility of our understanding, he 

III 



HERBERT SPENCER 

says, is the source of many of our most important 
ideas. For instance, our idea of the infinite he 
believes comes from our inability to assign limits to 
it — to space, for example — although he justly regards 
it as an affirmative idea. On the general question he 
expresses himself as follows, first stating that our 
faculties are shown to be weak but not deceitful ; 

"The mind is not represented as conceiving two proposi- 
tions subversive of each other, as equally possible; but only 
as unable to understand as possible either of two extremes, 
one of which, however, on the ground of their mutual repug- 
nance it is compelled to recognize as true. We are thus 
taught the salutary lesson, that the capacity of thought is 
not to be constituted into the measure of existence; and are 
warned from recognizing the domain of our knowledge as 
necessarily coextensive with the horizon of our faith. And by 
a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness 
of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and the 
finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something un- 
conditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality." 

This passage is referred to by Mr. Spencer in this 
very discussion, and not answered; and the real 
meaning of it seems to have been misunderstood. 

Thus Mr. Spencer has not only forced his defini- 
tion of religion, and the correct statement of the 
ground of controversy between it and science, but 
has also strained the proper use to be made of man's 
faculties and their limitations. Therefore the results 
of his reasoning are open to the same scepticism we 
should justly feel towards the results of an accountant 
who we believed had forced his trial-balance. 

Does Mr. Spencer deem himself a religious man? 
He tells us the consciousness of a power that is an 

112 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

utter mystery is the consciousness where religion 
dwells \ and I do not doubt he has this consciousness. 
All outside of that he pronounces irreligion ; and he 
claims to be shocked at what he calls "the impiety 
of the pious" in trying to realize the nature of this 
power. The intolerance with which he regards his 
erring and feeble-minded brother is, unfortunately, 
one mark of religion, but not sufficient evidence of it to 
lead me to accept his definition. A "liberal Christian" 
has been defined as "a man who believes what he 
pleases and damns those who do not ;" but this defini- 
tion does not point to the element in liberal Christian- 
ity that is most truly Christian or most truly liberal. 

While I think Mr. Spencer's reconciliation is a 
failure as such, yet much that he has said is well said, 
and was well to say. It must be right to learn all we 
can of the universe in which we find ourselves ; and 
the truths of science cannot be in confli6l with the 
truths of religion. The more truth we can acquire 
in any dire6lion the more accurate ought to be our 
view of truths in other dire6lions ; and genuine reli- 
gion has only benefit to apprehend from genuine 
science. In the very nature of things scientific 
knowledge must increase, and scientific opinions 
change ; and religion has found itself in unfortunate 
antagonism with science respecting matters which do 
not involve religion at all, simply because it accepted 
as final the mistaken science of an early age. It 
fell into this error because of a dogma that certain 
ancient writings were inspired and therefore infalli- 

113 



HERBERT SPENCER 

ble even in their incidental science — a claim which 
the writings themselves do not make. I trust I shall 
hurt no one's feelings in expressing the convi6lion 
that an infallible book, in the realistic way the ex- 
pression is generally used, is an impossibility. This 
very do6lrine of the relativity of our faculties — our 
incapacity to apprehend or even imagine realities — 
teaches the valuable lesson that divine truths com- 
municated through human instrumentalities come 
to us through an understanding that is feeble and 
limited, and are expressed in a language that has 
grown up to suit our understandings and therefore is 
also feeble and limited. There is, no doubt, a world 
of truth about us which we are too blear-eyed to see ; 
and the inspiration of the writer does not guaranty 
the perfe6tion of his work. An examination of the 
books of the Bible shows that the different authors 
saw things and expressed things in their own 
way ; and St. Paul's way was very different from St. 
Matthew's, The method provided today whereby we 
must acquire science is not inspiration, but work ; 
and it does not appear that the method was different 
three thousand years ago. Science deals exclusively 
with the relative and phenomenal, and we have the 
faculties to study that for ourselves. 

Mr. Spencer, in his Biology, defines life to be "the 
continuous adjustment of internal relations to exter- 
nal relations," meaning that living things make the 
necessary changes of strudlure to adapt themselves to 
environment, and that vital processes are a series of 
114 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION 

such adaptive changes. Whatever ceases to change 
as environment changes must die, and whatever has 
utterly ceased to change is dead already. The ten- 
dency of all things is to become stationary — that is, 
dead — and religion is not exempt from that tendency. 
It has been all too ready to suffer itself to become 
crystallized about a formula, forgetting that such 
formulas as we can comprehend embody not absolute 
truth but only relative truth ; and however beautiful 
a crystal may be, it is dead. But religion should do 
more than barely live — it should progress. Every- 
thing living goes on and on, and nothing stops by 
the wayside except to die. Ancient Councils and 
thinkers — great but not infallible — have from time 
to time set up stakes to which they have tethered 
religion, saying, "thus far shalt thou feed and no 
farther;" and religion cannot afford to remain tied 
while everything else moves forward, nor can it afford 
to forego any part of the universe in seeking its nat- 
ural sustenance. Religion, in adapting itself to a new 
environment, does not thereby "conform to the 
world" as it is called, that is, conform to irreligion. 
The processes of evolution are the reverse of this. 
Environment is always partly friendly and partly hos- 
tile ; and adaptation to it means resistance to what 
is hostile as much as seeking support from what is 
friendly. The capacity to distinguish friend from 
foe is therefore imperative in the struggle for ex- 
istence ; and Religion ought to make no mistake, 
but recognize Science as its friend. 

1^5 



AUTHORS NOTE 



AUTHOR S NOTE 

The foregoing essays were written without a thought 
of publication, and otherwise might have been more 
^'literary" in style, and perhaps more concise in 
statement. Papers to be heard but once must needs 
be simple and dire6t, and not over compa6l. The 
work of preparing such papers is none the less on 
that account ; and their very informality has at least 
the merit that it affords easy reading. The essays in 
this particular volume will not, I am sure, require of 
the reader either great learning or a great mind, but 
they involve questions important to every one ; and 
I have had them printed for the special purpose of 
distribution in the two societies who have honored 
me with membership, hoping that they might afford 
aid to some, and to others revive memories of past 
meetings and associations. 

P. C. 
September, Nineteen- Fifteen. 



iig 



CONTENTS 



CONTENTS 



The Statue and the Bust : Browning 

PAGE I 

MOLINISM AND THE MOLINISTS 
PAGE 45 

Disinterestedness in Social Service 

PAGE 63 

Reconciliation of Science and Religion : Spencer 

PAGE 93 

Author's Note 
PAGE 119 



GEO. H. WALCOTT 

PRINTER 

BOSTON, MASS. 



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